North Korean famine

The term "Arduous March" or "March of Suffering" became the official metaphor for the famine following a state propaganda campaign in 1993. The Rodong Sinmun urged the North Korean citizenry to invoke the memory of a 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 a heavy snowfall and starvation, the red flag fluttering in front of the rank".[12]

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.[13] A special group (the Simhwajo) was set up to purge the citizens responsible.

In North Korea, people are required to call the great famine the March of Hardship (Korean: 고난의 행군', romanized: ko'nan-ŭi haenggun). It was one of the most important events in the history of North Korea, because it forced the regime and its people to change their lives in fundamental and unanticipated ways.[6]

Only about 20% of North Korea's mountainous terrain is arable land. Much of the land is only frost-free for six months, and only one crop can be grown on it per year. The country has never been self-sufficient in food production, and many experts considered it unrealistic for the country to try to be.[14] Due to North Korea's terrain, farming is mainly concentrated among the flatlands of the four western coastal provinces. This allows a longer growing season, levelled land, substantial rainfall, and well-irrigated soil which permits the high cultivation of crops. Along with the western coastal provinces, fertile land also runs through the eastern seaboard provinces. However, interior provinces such as Chagang and Ryanggang are too mountainous, dry, and cold to support farming.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union embarked on political and economic reform. It began to demand that North Korea repay the Soviet Union for all of the past and current aid which it sent to North Korea – amounts which North Korea could not repay. By 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, ending all aid and trade concessions, such as cheap oil.[9] Without Soviet aid, the flow of imports to the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved to be too inflexible to respond.[15] Energy imports fell by 75%.[16] 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 reliant on electrically-powered irrigation systems, artificial fertilizers and pesticides was hit particularly hard by the economic collapse.[17][18]

Most North Koreans had experienced nutritional deprivation long before the mid-1990s. The country had reached the limits of its productive capacity, and could not respond effectively to exogenous shocks.[6]

North Korea's state trading companies emerged as an alternative means of conducting foreign economic relations. From the mid 1980s, these state trading companies became 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".[19]

The country soon imposed austerity measures, dubbed the "eat two meals a day" campaign.[20] These measures proved inadequate in stemming the economic decline. According to Professor Hazel Smith of Cranfield University:

…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.[21]

Without 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.[22] 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. 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.[23] As a result, he was publicly executed by firing squad by the North Korean government.[24]

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 homemade beer bottle IV sets, which were clearly not sterile. There was an absence of ORS (oral rehydration solution) and even the most basic drugs such as analgesics and antibiotics.[37]

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".[38] This reduced expected production of an already ravaged harvest by 50%.[39]

People everywhere were affected by the crisis, regardless of gender, affiliation or social class. Child malnutrition, indicated as being severely underweight, was found at 3% in 1987, 14% in 1997 and 7% in 2002.[40]

The exact number of deaths during the acute phase of the crisis, from 1994 to 1998, is uncertain. According to the researcher Andrei Lankov, both the extreme high and low ends of the estimates are considered inaccurate.[51] In 2001 and 2007, independent groups of researchers have estimated that between 600,000 and 1 million people, or 3 to 5 percent of the pre-crisis population, died due to starvation and hunger-related illness.[52][53] 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".[54] W. Courtland 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.[55] Andrew Natsios and others estimated 2-3 million deaths.[56][9]

According to 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.[10][11]

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.[57] 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 widespread government corruption, which nearly resulted in the collapse of old government controls and regulations.[58]

When fuel became scarce while demand for logistics rose, so-called servi-cha (Korean: 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.[59]

With the desperation derived from famine and informal trade and commercialization, North Koreans developed their black market, and moreover, they were surviving by adapting.[60] Andrei Lankov has described the process as the "natural death of North Korean Stalinism".[61]

The average official salary in 2011 was equivalent to $2 USD per month while the actual monthly income could be estimated to be around $15 USD because most North Koreans were earning money from illegal small businesses; trade, subsistence farming, and handicrafts. The illegal economy is largely dominated by women because men are expected to attend their places of official work even though most of the factories are non-functioning.[62]

Initial assistance to North Korea started as early as 1990, with small-scale support from religious groups in South Korea and assistance from UNICEF.[4] In August 1995, North Korea made an official request for humanitarian aid and the international community responded accordingly:[5]

A South Korean relief caravan of 501 cattle in 50 vehicles bound for North Korea, Oct. 27, 1998.

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.[63] 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.[64] 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.[65]

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.[66] There have also been aid disruptions due to widespread theft of railway cars used by mainland China to deliver food relief.[67]

North Korea has not yet resumed reliable self-sufficiency in food production and as a result, it periodically relies on external food aid from South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, the European Union and other countries.[68] In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered.[69]

In 2005, 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.[70][71] 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.[64] 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.[72]

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.[73] 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.[74]

Escaped North Koreans reported in September 2010 that starvation had returned to the nation.[75] North Korean pre-school children are reported to be an average of three to four centimetres (1+1⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) shorter than South Koreans, which some researchers believe can only be explained by conditions of famine and malnutrition.[76] Most people only eat meat on public holidays, namely Kim Jong Il's birthday, the Day of the Shining Star on February 16 and Kim Il Sung's birthday, the Day of the Sun on April 15.[77]

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.[78] 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.[79]

On the other hand, the WFP has reported malnutrition and food shortages, but not famine.[80] In 2016, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported a steady decline in the infant mortality rate since 2008.[81] 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.[82] In 2017, the analyst Andrei Lankov argued that previous predictions of a return to famine were unfounded, and that the days of starvation had long since passed.[83]

A survey in 2017 found that the famine had skewed North Korea's demography, impacting particularly male babies. Women aged 20–24 made up 4% of the population, while men in the same age group made up only 2.5%.[84] Chronic or recurrent malnutrition dropped from 28 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017.[85]

In June 2019, after a report made by the United Nations stated that North Korea had experienced the worst harvests in over a decade along with severe food shortages that affected 40% of North Korea's population, South Korea enacted a plan to provide US$8 million worth of food aid to North Korea. The South Korean government's aid to North Korea is widely viewed as having a political agenda of improving inter-Korean relations, despite the South's government insistence on separating the aid from politics.[86]

• Kotjebi
• Potato production in North Korea
• Economy of North Korea
• History of North Korea
• World Food Programme
• Sunshine Policy
• North Korea–South Korea relations
• North Korea–China relations

• Lankov, Andrei. “Trouble Brewing: The North Korean Famine of 1954–1955 and Soviet Attitudes toward North Korea". Journal of Cold War Studies 22:2 (Spring 2020) pp:3-25. online
• 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.

• Newspaper account (Daily Telegraph) including famine deaths of kindergarten children.
• Korea Forest Service