North Korea wants to increase food production
According to state news agency KCNA, Kim urged farmers to focus on increasing grain production and meet annual targets “without fail” at a meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The Pyongyang government considers agricultural development a matter of “strategic” importance, Kim stressed. “In order to achieve the great long-term goals of rural development, it is necessary to decisively strengthen the party’s guidance in the agricultural sector and improve the party’s activity in the rural environment,” the North Korean leader explained. He insisted that attention be paid to “overcoming the imbalances in the guidelines for agriculture” and “increasing the yield per hectare in all agricultural holdings,” KCNA reported.
North Korea, isolated internationally because of its nuclear weapons program, has long been dependent on foreign food aid, both as a result of natural disasters and its own mismanagement. Moreover, the country was hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, which increased its isolation. The South Korean Ministry of Unification signaled at the end of February that there were also deaths due to starvation in North Korea. Kim Jong Un has referred to these difficulties since 2021, saying then that the food situation in the country has become “tense” and warning the population to prepare for “the worst”. According to the UN World Food Program, about 10.7 million North Koreans suffer from malnutrition out of a total population of 25.9 million. North Korea is no stranger to mass hunger. During the 1990s, the country suffered a catastrophic famine. Estimates vary widely, but it’s believed that anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million people, or about three to five percent of the prefamine population, died as a result. [2] North Korea’s chronic food insecurity is the product of decades of economic mismanagement and the internal and external policies of the incumbent political regime. Throughout its history, North Korea has pursued the goal of national food security through an economically irrational policy of self-sufficiency. In a narrow sense, the approach has worked in that most of the grain consumed in North Korea is produced domestically. However, achieving adequate agricultural output on North Korea’s unfavorable soils has, ironically, generated a heavy reliance on imported goods and left the country exposed to global shocks, diplomatic conflicts, and adverse weather. [3] Furthermore, the state’s arbitrary crackdowns on independent donju (entrepreneurs) blunt incentives and starve the economy of investment and growth.
By Cora Sulleyman
