2019-01-31

How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea - The Atlantic

How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea - The Atlantic



How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea
JORDAN WEISSMANNDEC 20, 2011


What kind of disastrous economic policy results in the death by starvation of up to 3 million people in a nation with the population of Texas?


Reuters

When North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died of a coronary this weekend after 17 years in power, the homuncular tyrant left his country much as he found it -- poor and desperately hungry.



For the last two decades, North Korea has grappled with food crisis upon food crisis, the result of a dysfunctional government and its erratic leader. In 1994, the year Kim inherited North Korea's reins from his late father, the country was in the midst of a severe agricultural decline. The newly minted despot transformed it into a famine that would claim as many as three million lives. Food shortages have plagued the country ever since.


It begs the question: How did one man starve a nation of roughly 23 million people? The answer: By clinging to a broken economic system designed to do little but ensure his own survival.

Agriculture has always been a dicey proposition in North Korea, where the cold, mountainous terrain is short on high-quality farmland. A normal economy could cope by importing food. But during the 1980s, the North Korean government embarked on a policy of radical self-sufficiency known as juche. Farmers were expected to overcome mother nature and grow enough crops to feed the entire population. To do it, they relied on heaps of chemical fertilizer. But that crutch was yanked away in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.






The demise of the USSR threw North Korea's entire economy into chaos, and agriculture was among its most important casualties. Without imports of cheap fuel (self-sufficiency had its limits), the country's industrial base fractured, and production of fertilizer dwindled. Farm yields plummeted, and the government started a campaign urging citizens to consume less. Its cheery slogan: "Let's eat only two meals a day."

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It was against this background that the Kim Jong Il took power. The country was at a crossroads, says Marcus Noland, a leading expert on North Korea at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. With the USSR gone, the prospects for a small, isolated, neo-Stalinist regime looked rather grim. The government could have opened up its economy, much like Vietnam did with great success. Instead, North Korea chose to stay frozen in time.




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"The mystery is why the North Koreans did not understand the historical magnitude of the change around them," Noland says.

One Cold War relic in desperate need of reform was the country's food distribution system. Crops such as rice and corn were raised on collectivist farms, then doled out by the state. The process served a political purpose by funneling cheap food to the country's outsized military, as well as citizens in the capital of Pyongyang, which together made up the base of Kim's power. But it was also ready to collapse.


AFTER THE COLD WAR, THE FARMER WAR


In 1995, when the globe first learned about the North Korean famine, massive floods decimated as much as 15% of North Korea's farmable land. Local officials began hoarding food they were charged with distributing. And a fuel shortage made it impossible to move crops around the country. The government appealed to the United Nations World Food Program for humanitarian aid, blaming the floods for the disaster. Yet even as he sought help from abroad, Kim deepened the crisis at home by stumbling into a war with his country's farmers.



Without enough food to go around, the North Korean regime had turned to triage. Pyongyang and the military had to eat, so the government cut rations for farmers instead, slashing the portion of their harvest they could keep to feed their own families. Predictably, there were severe consequences. Faced with the unappealing prospect of going hungry, farmers began hiding their grain. In 1996, the World Food Program found that half the country's corn crop had gone missing. Reports spread of farmers' roofs collapsing under the weight of stashed food. Soldiers were sent to guard the fields at harvest time, but as a United States Institute for Peace reportnoted, they were easily bribed. After all, the soldiers were hungry, too.

From there, the situation only degenerated. Despite the international community's wariness toward the Kim regime, food aid did begin to flow. But much of it was stolen by well-connected elites, who re-sold the aid at marked-up prices. Farmers started doing the same thing with their own crops. As a result, food prices soared, and the poorest continued to starve.






Farmers stole their own crops. Elites stole the aid. Impoverished Koreans starved. Because the country's statistics are so unreliable, nobody knows the exact number of casualties caused by the famine. But common estimates peg the number of deaths between one million to three million.


THE GHOSTS OF 1994


The great famine finally began to subside in 1998. There were better harvests. The world continued delivering food aid. And North Koreans adjusted to the new private food markets. But history had a habit of repeating itself under Kim. The government set in motion a second, albeit milder, food crisis when it outlawed the private sale of grain in 2005, forcing the country to rely once again on the public food system. The situation worsened once foreign governments cut off aid following the military's first nuclear test.

Then just in October, Reuters published areporton the growing fears about yet another food shortage.

"The country's dysfunctional food-distribution system, rising global commodities prices and sanctions imposed over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs had contributed to what appears to be a hunger crisis in the North, even before devastating summer floods and typhoons compounded the emergency," the wire reported.



There are skeptics who believe that Pyongyang is exaggerating its food problems. The country is known to hold grain for its military, even as rural peasants starve, and according to Reuters, South Korean officials believe it may be stockpiling supplies in preparation of a new nuclear test.

And yet, the echoes of 1994 are haunting. Like his father before him, Kim Jong Il has left the country in the hands of a politically inexperienced son, who has yet to consolidate his own power. Once again, the transition has happened at a moment when the government may not be able to feed its own people. Hopefully, the parallels end there.

>

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JORDAN WEISSMANNis a former senior associate editor at The Atlantic.
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고난의 행군 - 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전



고난의 행군 - 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전



고난의 행군
위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.

둘러보기로 가기검색하러 가기


조선민주주의인민공화국의 기근(朝鮮民主主義人民共和國饑饉) 또는 고난의 행군(苦難行軍)은 조선민주주의인민공화국에서 1990년대 중반 최악의 식량난으로 약 33만 명의 조선민주주의인민공화국 국민들이 아사하자[1][2] 김일성의 항일 활동 시기 어려웠던 상황을 상기시켜 위기를 극복하려고 채택한 구호이다. 1938년 말 ~ 1939년 초 김일성이 이끄는 유격대가 만주에서 혹한과 굶주림을 겪으며 일본군의 토벌작전을 피해 100여 일간 행군한 데서 유래했다. 고난의 행군 시기 아사자가 300만 명이라는 주장도 제기되었지만, 2010년 11월 22일 대한민국 통계청이 유엔의 인구센서스를 바탕으로 발표한 북한 인구 추계에 따르면, '고난의 행군(1996~2000년)' 시기 실제에 근접한 아사수는 33만여 명이다.[2]


목차
1배경
2실제에 근접한 사망자 수
3각주
4같이 보기
5외부 링크
배경[편집]

1989년에 동구권 공산당 일당 독재가 붕괴하였고 1991년에는 소련이 붕괴하였다. 동구권의 붕괴로 고립된 조선민주주의인민공화국의 경제는 파탄에 이르렀고 설상가상으로 1993년 흉작,[3] 1990년대 중반에는 수해로 인한 최악의 대흉작으로 배급제가 붕괴되며 아사자가 속출하기 시작했다. 1996년 1월 1일 노동당 기관지인 〈노동신문〉 등은 신년 공동사설에서 '모자라는 식량을 함께 나눠먹으며 일본군에 맞서 투쟁한 항일빨치산의 눈물겨운 고난과 불굴의 정신력'을 상기하자며 "'고난의 행군' 정신으로 어려움을 헤쳐나가자"고 호소했다. 이후 조선민주주의인민공화국 내에서 '익측(翼側)도 후방도 없이 걸어온 간고한 행군길'에 관한 항일빨치산 1세대들의 증언이 대대적으로 보도되기 시작했다. 여기에 더해 서정시 〈끝나지 않는 행군길〉, 가요 〈고난의 행군 정신으로〉·〈아버지 어머니의 청춘시절〉 등과 영화들이 잇달아 발표되면서 대대적인 홍보에 나섰다.



1989년에서 1997년까지 북한 쌀, 옥수수 생산량198919901991199219931994199519961997
쌀( 정미 100만 톤)3.243.363.073.343.562.181.400.981.10
옥수수(100만 톤)4.343.904.203.723.943.551.370.831.01


[4]

이로 인해 조선민주주의인민공화국 지도부는 1998년에 경제 건설을 위한 '사회주의 강행군'을 제시했고 2000년 1월 1일 〈노동신문〉은 신년 공동사설을 통해 "우리 인민의 투쟁으로 여러 해째 계속된 어려운 행군이 마침내 '구보(驅步) 행군' 단계에 접어들었다"고 공식 선언했다.
실제에 근접한 사망자 수[편집]

2000년대 초중반까지 뚜렷한 근거는 없지만, 일부 대한민국 언론으로부터 고난의 행군 동안 사망자가 3백만 명이라는 주장이 제기되기도 했다. 이런 주장은 일본 공산당 기관지 '아카하타'의 평양 특파원을 지낸 하기와라 료(萩原遼)의 저서 "김정일의 숨겨진 전쟁(金正日 隠された戦争)"에서 처음 나온 것이다.[5]

2010년 11월 22일 대한민국 통계청이 발표한 북한 인구 추계에 따르면, '고난의 행군(1996~2000년)' 시기에는 33만여 명이 사망했다. 북한이 1990년대 중반 이후 10여 년(1994~2005년)간 식량난으로 61만 명의 인구 손실을 본 것으로 추산됐다.[2]

기초자료는 유엔의 지원 아래 인구센서스를 실시한 1993년과 2008년의 통계. 통계청은 93년 통계를 나이와 사망률, 탈북인구, 연령별 출산율을 고려한 뒤 2008년 통계와 비교·분석했다. 통계청 관계자는 “인구센서스를 바탕으로 추계한 만큼 이번에 발표한 숫자가 실제와 가장 근접할 것”이라고 말했다.[2]


각주[편집]

  1. ↑ 북한주민 기대수명 남한보다 11세 낮아
  2. ↑ 이동:가 나 다 라 북한 ‘고난의 행군’ 5년 동안 주민 33만 명 굶어 죽어 중앙일보 2010.11.23 종합 6면
  3. ↑ 『現代北朝鮮経済研究へのアプローチ』王勝今, 藤田暁男, 龍世祥著 １０４p 「1993년 곡물생산실적은 춘경기의 저온기상과 8월 집중호우로 인한 홍수 피해로 전년보다 12% 감소한 481만 3000톤(정곡기준)으로 멈추었다.」
  4. ↑ 『UNDP[1998]』
  5. ↑ 북한의 대 기근은 김정일의 인위적 조작 자유아시아 방송 2004-12-05
  6. 萩原 遼, 『金正日 隠された戦争―金日成の死と大量餓死の謎を解』 文藝春秋 2004年11月
  7. 『김정일의 숨겨진 전쟁 : 김일성의 죽음과 대량 아사의 수수께끼를 푼다』 하기와라 료 지음 | 양창식 옮김 | 자유미디어 | 2011년 12월 10일 출간


같이 보기[편집]
대약진 운동
3년 대기근(zh:三年困难时期)
홀로도모르
외부 링크[편집]
고난의 행군 - 북한 지식사전, 통일부, 2013.11.11
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North Korean famine - Wikipedia



North Korean famine - Wikipedia



North Korean famine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Arduous March
(고난의 행군)
Country North Korea
Location Nation-wide
Period 1994–1998
Total deaths 240,000 to 3.5 million
Observations Economic mismanagement,[1]natural disasters,[2] collapse of the Soviet bloc
Relief Food and humanitarian aid (1994–2002)[3]
Consequences Militarization of economy; spread of limited market activity; food aid from South Korea, China, United States, Pakistan, Japan and the European Union[4]

The Arduous March
Chosŏn'gŭl
고난의 행군
Hancha
苦難의行軍
Revised Romanization gonanui haenggun
McCune–Reischauer konanŭi haenggun


Part of a series on the
History of North Korea


Soviet Civil Administration 1945–48
Provisional People's Committee for North Korea 1946–48
Kim Il-sung's rule 1948–94
Korean War 1950–53
Korean DMZ Conflict 1966–69
Juche 1972
Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung 1994
Kim Jong-il's rule 1994–2011
North Korean famine 1994–98
Songun 1998
Sunshine Policy 1998–2010
Six-party talks 2003
ROKS Cheonan sinking 2010
Death and state funeral of Kim Jong-il 2011
Kim Jong-un's rule 2011–present
State Affairs Commission 2016
North Korean crisis 2017
DPRK-US summit 2018

North Korea portal


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The North Korean famine (Korean: 조선기근), which together with the accompanying general economic crisis are known as the Arduous March or The March of Suffering[5] (고난의 행군) in North Korea, occurred in North Korea from 1994 to 1998.[6]

The famine stemmed from a variety of factors. Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean governmentand its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster.[5][6] Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Out of a total population of approximately 22 million, somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses, with the deaths peaking in 1997.[7][8] A 2011 U.S. Census Bureau report put the likely number of excess deaths during 1993 to 2000 at from 500,000 to 600,000.[9]

Contents
1Arduous March
2Background

3Causes
3.1Floods and drought
3.2Failure of the public distribution system
3.3Long-term causes

4Healthcare
5Widespread malnutrition
5.1Military
5.2Women
5.3Children

6Estimated number of deaths
7Black markets
8International response
9Post-famine developments
10See also
11References
12Further reading
13External links

Arduous March[edit]

The term "Arduous March", or "The March of Suffering" became a metaphor for the famine following a state propaganda campaign in 1993. The Rodong Sinmun urged the North Korean citizenry to invoke the memory of an apocryphal fable from Kim Il-sung's time as a commander of a small group of anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters. The story, referred to as the Arduous March, is described as "fighting against thousands of enemies in 20 degrees below zero, braving through a heavy snowfall and starvation, the red flag fluttering in front of the rank."[10]

As part of this state campaign, uses of words such as 'famine' and 'hunger' were banned because they implied government failure. Citizens who said deaths were due to the famine could be in serious trouble with the authorities.[11]

Background[edit]

The great famine is known in North Korea by the officially mandated phrase konanŭi haenggun (The Arduous March). It was a central event in the country's history, and it forced the regime and its people to change in fundamental and unanticipated ways.[5]

Only about 20% of North Korea's mountainous terrain is arable land. Much of the land is only frost-free for six months, allowing only one crop per year. The country has never been self-sufficient in food, and many experts considered it unrealistic to try to be.[12]

In the late 1980s the Soviet Union was embarking on political and economic reform. It began demanding payment from North Korea for past and current aid – amounts North Korea could not repay. On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union fell, ending all aid and trade concessions, such as cheap oil.[7] Without Soviet aid, the flow of imports to the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved too inflexible to respond.[13]In 1991, energy imports fell by 75%.[14] The economy went into a downward spiral, with imports and exports falling in tandem. Flooded coal mines required electricity to operate pumps, and the shortage of coal worsened the shortage of electricity. Agriculture relied on electrically powered irrigation systems and artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and it was hard hit by the economic collapse.[15][16]

Most North Koreans had experienced nutritional deprivation long before the mid-1990s. The country had once been fed with a centrally planned economic system that overproduced food, had long ago reached the limits of its productive capacity, and could not respond effectively to exogenous shocks.[5]

North Korea's state trading companies emerged as an alternative means of conducting foreign economic relations. Over the past two decades, these state trading companies have become important conduits of funding for the regime, with a percentage of all revenues going "directly into Kim Jong-il's personal accounts ... [which have been] used to secure and maintain the loyalty of the senior leadership." [17]

The country soon instigated austerity measures, dubbed the "eat two meals a day" campaign.[18] These measures proved inadequate in stemming the economic decline. According to Professor Hazel Smith of Cranfield University,[19]


... the methods of the past that had produced short-to medium-term gains might have continued producing further small economic benefits if the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc had remained and continued to supply oil, technology, and expertise.
— Hazel Smith, Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea

Without the help from these countries, North Korea was unable to respond adequately to the coming famine. For a time, China filled the gap left by the Soviet Union's collapse and propped up North Korea's food supply with significant aid.[20] By 1993, China was supplying North Korea with 77 percent of its fuel imports and 68 percent of its food imports. Thus, North Korea replaced its dependence on the Soviet Union with dependence on China – with predictably dire consequences. In 1993, China faced its own grain shortfalls and need for hard currency, and it sharply cut aid to North Korea.

In 1997, So Kwan-hui, the North Korean Minister of Agriculture, was accused of spying for the United States government and sabotaging North Korean agriculture on purpose, thus leading to the famine.[21] As a result, he was publicly executed by firing squad by the North Korean government.[22]

Causes[edit]

1] Floods and drought[edit]

The economic decline and failed policies provided the context for the famine, but the floods of the mid-1990s were the immediate cause. The floods in July and August 1995 were described as being "of biblical proportions" by independent observers.[23] They were estimated to affect as much as 30 percent of the country.[24]

As devastating floods ravaged the country in 1995, arable land, harvests, grain reserves, and social and economic infrastructure were destroyed. The United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs reported that "between 30 July and 18 August 1995, torrential rains caused devastating floods in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). In one area, in Pyongsan county in North Hwanghae province, 877 mm of rain were recorded to have fallen in just seven hours, an intensity of precipitation unheard of in this area... water flow in the engorged Amnoc River, which runs along the Korea/China border, was estimated at 4.8 billion tons over a 72 hour period. Flooding of this magnitude had not been recorded in at least 70 years."[25]

The major issues created by the floods were not only the destruction of crop lands and harvests, but also the loss of emergency grain reserves, because many of them were stored underground. According to the United Nations, the floods of 1994 and 1995 destroyed around 1.5 million tons of grain reserves,[26] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that 1.2 million tons (or 12%) of grain production was lost in the 1995 flood.[27] There were further major floods in 1996 and a drought in 1997.[28]

North Korea lost an estimated 85% of its power generation capacity due to flood damage to infrastructures such as hydropower plants, coal mines, and supply and transport facilities.[29] UN officials reported that the power shortage from 1995 to 1997 was not due to a shortage of oil, because only two out of a total of two dozen power stations were dependent on heavy fuel oil for power generation... and these were supplied by KEDO (the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization). About 70% of power generated in the DPRK came from hydropower sources, and the serious winter-spring droughts of 1996 and 1997 (and a breakdown on one of the Yalu River's large hydro turbines) created major shortages throughout the country at that time, severely cutting back railway transportation (which was almost entirely dependent on electric power), which in turn resulted in coal supply shortages to the coal-fueled power stations which supplied the remaining 20% of power in the country.[30]

A 2008 study, however, found no variation in children's nutrition between counties that had experienced flooding and those that had not.[31][??]

2] Failure of the public distribution system[edit]

North Korea's vulnerability to the floods and famine was exacerbated by the failure of the public distribution system.[5] The regime refused to pursue policies that would have allowed food imports and distribution without discrimination to all regions of the country.[5]Food was distributed to people according to their political standing and their degree of loyalty to the state.[32] The system was created by Cabinet Decrees 96 and 102 in November 1957.

The structure is as follows (the World Food Program considers 600 grams of cereal per day to be less than a "survival ration"):
CategoryAmount allocated
  • Privileged industrial worker 900 grams/day
  • Ordinary worker 700 grams/day
  • Retired citizen 300 grams/day
  • 2~4-year-old 200 grams/day


However, the extended period of food shortages put a strain on the system, and it spread the amount of available food allocations thinly across the groups, affecting 62% of the population who were entirely reliant on public distribution. The system was feeding only 6% of the population by 1997.
YearChanges
1987 Reduced 10%
1992 Reduced another 10%
1994 470 grams/day down 420 grams/day
1997 128 grams/day


The annual amount of food a farmer could keep fell from 167 kilograms to 107 kilograms.

3] Long-term causes[edit][주체농법??] 

The famine was also a result of the culmination of a long series of poor government decisions that accrued slowly over decades.[5] The attempt to follow a closed-economic model caused the regime to abandon the possibility of engaging in international markets and importing food and instead restrict demand. Attempts to increase exports and earn foreign exchange through the Najin Sonbong free trade zone in 1991 were unsuccessful. The North Korean government also missed the opportunity for the short-term option to borrow from abroad to finance food imports after having defaulted on foreign loans in the 1970s.[6]
--------------

Healthcare[edit]
Main article: Health in North Korea

Inadequate medical supplies, water and environmental contamination, frequent power failures, and outdated training led to a health care crisis that added to the overall devastation. According to a 1997 UNICEF delegation, hospitals were clean but wards were devoid of even the most rudimentary supplies and equipment; sphygmomanometers, thermometers, scales, kidney dishes, spatulas, IV giving sets, etc. The mission saw numerous patients being treated with home made beer bottle IV sets, clearly unsterile. There was an absence of ORS (oral rehydration solution) and even the most basic drugs such as analgesics and antibiotics.[33]

Widespread malnutrition[edit]
See also: Health in North Korea § Malnutrition

With the widespread destruction of harvests and food reserves, the majority of the population became desperate for food, including areas well established in food production. In 1996, it was reported that people in "the so-called better-off parts of the country, were so hungry that they ate the maize cobs before the crop was fully developed."[34] This reduced expected production of an already ravaged harvest by 50%.[35]

People everywhere were affected by the crisis, regardless of gender, affiliation or social class. Child malnutrition, as indicated by severe underweight, was found at 3% in 1987, 14% in 1997 and 7% in 2002.[36]
Rice and maize production of North Korea from 1989 to 1997[37]Year198919901991199219931994199519961997
Rice milled (million tons) 3.24 3.36 3.07 3.34 3.56 2.18 1.40 0.98 1.10
Corn harvested (million tons) 4.34 3.90 4.20 3.72 3.94 3.55 1.37 0.83 1.01

Military[edit]

Songun is North Korea's "Military First" policy, which prioritizes the Korean People's Armyin affairs of state and allocates national resources to the "army first". Even though the armed forces were given priority for the distribution of food, this did not mean that they all received generous rations.[38]

The army was supposed to find ways to grow food to feed itself and to develop industries that would permit it to purchase food and supplies from abroad. The rations received by military personnel were very basic, and "ordinary soldiers of the million-strong army often remained hungry, as did their families, who did not receive preferential treatment simply because a son or daughter was serving in the armed forces."[39]

Women[edit]

Women suffered significantly due to the gendered structure of North Korean society, which deemed women responsible for obtaining food, water and fuel for their families, which often included extended families.[40] Simultaneously, women had the highest participation rate in the workforce of any country in the world, calculated at 89%.[41] Therefore, women had to remain in the workforce and obtain supplies for their families.

Pregnant and nursing women faced severe difficulties in staying healthy; maternal mortality rates increased to approximately 41 per 1000, while simple complications such as anemia, hemorrhage and premature birth became common due to vitamin deficiency.[42][43] It was estimated that the number of births declined by about 0.3 children per woman during that period.[8][44]

Children[edit]

Children, especially those under two years old, were most affected by both the famine and the poverty of the period. The World Health Organization reported death rates for children at 93 out of every 1000, while those of infants were cited at 23 out of every 1000.[45]Undernourished mothers found it difficult to breast-feed. No suitable alternative to the practice was available. Infant formula was not produced locally, and only a small amount of it was imported.[34]

The famine resulted in a population of homeless, migrant children known as Kotjebi.[46]

Estimated number of deaths[edit]

The exact number of deaths during the acute phase of the crisis, from 1994 to 1998, will probably never be fully determined, since the government has refused to release any of this information to the outside world. Independent analysis estimates that between 800,000 and 1,500,000 people died due to starvation, disease, or sickness caused by lack of food.[47][48]

Haggard and Noland reviewed all estimates of the "excess" deaths caused by the famine. Estimates range from 220,000 to 4,000,000 between 1995 and 1998, as claimed by the North Korean government.[49]

In 1998, US Congressional staffers who visited the country reported that: "Therefore, we gave a range of estimates, from 300,000 to 800,000 dying per year, peaking in 1997. That would put the total number of deaths from the North Korean food shortage at between 900,000 and 2.4 million between 1995 and 1998."[50] Higher estimates range from 2 to 3 million.[7] North Korean officials have put the figures as low as 250,000 in confidential discussions. Both the extreme high and low ends of the estimates are considered inaccurate.[51]

A survey by North Korea's Public Security Ministry suggests that 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 people died from 1995 to March 1998, although the numbers may have been inflated in order to secure additional food aid.[52] The most sophisticated estimates used to measure excess deaths based on different data from multiple sources give a total number ranging from 600,000 to 1,000,000, or 3 to 5 percent of the pre-crisis population[53]

The consequences of the famine are still playing out – most notably, in the breakdown of the public distribution system and the government's food rationing system and other economic institutions, as well as increasing self-reliance by North Koreans in providing for themselves and their families.[54]

Robinson's team found 245,000 "excess" deaths (an elevated mortality rate as a result of premature death), 12 percent of the population in one affected region. Taking those results as the upper limit and extrapolating across the entire North Korean population across the country's provinces produces an upper limit of 2,000,000 famine-related deaths.[54]

According to the recent research by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011, the likely range of excess deaths between 1993 and 2000 was between 500,000 and 600,000, and a total of 600,000 to 1,000,000 excess deaths from the year 1993 to the year 2008.[8][page needed][9]

Black markets[edit]

At the same time, the years of famine were also marked by a dramatic revival of illegal, private market activities. Smuggling across the border boomed, and up to 250,000 North Koreans moved to China.[citation needed] Amartya Sen had mentioned bad governance as one of the structural and economic problems which contributed to the famine, but it seems that the famine also led to the widespread government corruption which nearly collapsed old controls and regulations from Pyongyang.[55]

When fuel became scarce while demand for logistics rose, so-called servi-cha(Chosŏn'gŭl: 써비차; MR: ssŏbich'a, "service cars") operations formed, wherein an entrepreneur provides transportation to businesses, institutions and individuals without access to other means of transportation, while the car is formally owned by a legitimate enterprise or unit that also provides transportation permits.[56] The people of North Korea were becoming less reliant on their government and they came to trust the Kim family less.[55]

With the desperation derived from famine and informal trade and commercialization, North Koreans developed their black market, and moreover, they were surviving by adapting.[57]Andrei Lankov has described the process as the "natural death of North Korean Stalinism".[58]

The average official salary in 2011 was equivalent to $US2 per month while the actual monthly income seems to be around $US15 because most North Koreans earn money from illegal small businesses: trade, subsistence farming, and handicrafts. The illegal economy is dominated by women because men have to attend their places of official work even though most of the factories are non-functioning.[59]

International response[edit]

Initial assistance to North Korea started as early as 1990, with small-scale support from religious groups in South Korea and assistance from UNICEF.[3] In August 1995, North Korea made an official request for humanitarian aid and the international community responded accordingly:[4]
Food aid by year (thousands of tons)Donor19951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011TotalS. Korea 150 3 60 48 12 352 198 458 542 407 493 80 431 59 23 3,314
China 100 150 151 201 280 420 330 212 132 451 207 264 116 3,015
U.S.A. 22 193 231 589 351 319 222 47 105 28 171 121 1 2,400
Others 394 380 501 361 198 248 571 168 143 201 125 20 26 145 61 71 47 3,661
Total 544 505 904 791 1,000 1,231 1,508 1,178 944 845 1,097 307 721 375 298 95 47 12,390


Beginning in 1996, the U.S. also started shipping food aid to North Korea through the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to combat the famine. Shipments peaked in 1999 at nearly 600,000 tons making the U.S. the largest foreign aid donor to the country at the time. Under the Bush Administration, aid was drastically reduced year after year from 320,000 tons in 2001 to 28,000 tons in 2005.[60] The Bush Administration was criticized for using "food as a weapon" during talks over the North's nuclear weapons program, but insisted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) criteria were the same for all countries and the situation in North Korea had "improved significantly since its collapse in the mid-1990s."

South Korea (before the Lee Myung-bak government) and China remained the largest donors of food aid to North Korea. The U.S. objects to this manner of donating food due to the North Korean state's refusal to allow donor representatives to supervise the distribution of their aid inside North Korea.[61] Such supervision would ensure that aid does not get seized and sold by well-connected elites or diverted to feed North Korea's large military. In 2005, South Korea and China together provided almost 1 million tons of food aid, each contributing half.[62]

Humanitarian aid from North Korea's neighbors has been cut off at times in order to provoke North Korea into resuming boycotted talks. For example, South Korea decided to "postpone consideration" of 500,000 tons of rice for the North in 2006, but the idea of providing food as a clear incentive (as opposed to resuming "general humanitarian aid") has been avoided.[63] There have also been aid disruptions due to widespread theft of railway cars used by mainland China to deliver food relief.[64]

Post-famine developments[edit]

North Korea has not yet resumed its self-sufficiency in food production and it relies on external food aid from South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, the European Unionand others. In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered.[65]

In the mid-2000s, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea, and the government was reported to have mobilized millions of city-dwellers in order to help rice farmers.[66][67] In 2012, the WFP reported that food would be sent to North Korea as soon as possible. The food would first be processed by a local processor and it would then be delivered directly to North Korean citizens.

Agricultural production increased from about 2.7 million metric tons in 1997 to 4.2 million metric tons in 2004.[61] In 2008, food shortages continued to be a problem in North Korea, although less so than in the mid to late 1990s. Flooding in 2007 and reductions in food aid exacerbated the problem.[68]

In 2011, during a visit to North Korea, former US President Jimmy Carter reported that one third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth because of a lack of food. He also said that the North Korean government had reduced daily food intake from 5,900 to 2,900 kJ (1,400 to 700 kcal) in 2011.[69] Some scholars believed that North Korea was purposefully exaggerating the food shortage, aiming to receive additional food supplies for its planned mass-celebrations of Kim Il-sung's 100th birthday in 2012 by means of foreign aid.[70]

Escaped North Koreans reported in September 2010 that starvation had returned to the nation.[71] North Korean pre-school children are reported to be an average of 3 to 4 cm (1.2 to 1.6 inches) shorter than South Koreans, which some researchers[who?] believe can only be explained by conditions of famine and malnutrition.[72] Roughly 45% of North Korean children under the age of five are stunted from malnutrition and the population of kotjebi persists.[73] Most people only eat meat on public holidays, namely Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il's birthdays.[74]

One report by the Tokyo Shimbun in April 2012 claimed that since the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011, around 20,000 people had starved to death in South Hwanghae Province.[75] Another report by the Japanese Asia Press agency in January 2013 claimed that in North and South Hwanghae provinces more than 10,000 people had died of famine. Other international news agencies have begun circulating stories of cannibalism.[76]

On the other hand, the WFP has reported malnutrition and food shortages, but not famine.[77] In 2016, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported a steady decline in the infant mortality rate since 2008.[78] An academic analysis in 2016 found that the situation had greatly improved since the 1990s and that North Korea's levels of health and nutrition were on par with other developing countries.[79] In 2017, the analyst Andrei Lankov argued that previous predictions of a return to famine were unfounded, and that the days of starvation were long since passed.[80]

A survey in 2017 found that the famine had skewed North Korea's demography, impacting particularly on boy babies. Women aged 20-24 made up 4% of the population, while men in the same age group made up only 2.5%.[81] Chronic or recurrent malnutrition dropped from 28 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017.[82]

See also[edit]

North Korea portal
Death portal
Kotjebi
Potato production in North Korea

Analogous famines:
Great Chinese Famine
Holodomor

General:
Economy of North Korea
History of North Korea
World Food Programme


References[edit]

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Further reading[edit]

Natsios, Andrew S. (2001). The Great North Korean Famine. Washington: Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 978-1-929223-34-3.
Vollertsen, Norbert (2004). Inside North Korea: Diary of a Mad Place. San Francisco: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-893554-87-0.
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