The famine looming over North Korea, which may be the worst in decades

Alarm messages arrive from inside and outside North Korea.

North Korean defectors in South Korea told us that their families in the north are starving. It is feared that with the arrival of winter the most vulnerable will die of starvation.

“Problems such as more orphans on the streets and starvation deaths are continually reported”, He assures Lee Sang Yong, editor-in-chief of Daily NK, which has sources in North Korea.

“The lower classes in North Korea are suffering more and more”As the food shortage is proving worse than expected, according to Lee.

Obtaining information from North Korea is increasingly difficult.

The border has been closed since January last year to prevent the spread of covid from China. Even sending messages to family members who fled to North Korea carries enormous risks.

Anyone caught with an unauthorized cell phone can be placed in a forced labor camp.

And still, some try to send text or voice messages to their loved ones and the media in Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

Through these sources, some of which must remain anonymous, we have tried to describe what is happening in North Korea.

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“Every grain of rice”

North Korea has always suffered from food shortages, but the pandemic has made the situation worse.

Their leader, Kim Jong-un he has compared the current crisis to the so-called “Arduous March” of 1990, the worst disaster in the country’s history, in which hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger.

It is believed that things have not reached that point yet. There are some signs of hope. The reopening of the border with China seems close, but there is no certainty of the volume of trade or aid that will be needed to repair the damage suffered so far.

The this year’s harvest is crucial. A series of typhoons destroyed crops last year.

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To ensure the greatest possible success this year, tens of thousands of people have been sent to the fields to help with the harvesting of rice and corn, including many military personnel.

According to some reports, Kim Jong-un has ordered that every grain of rice be insured and that everyone help in the harvest.

“A plan has been designed to reduce harvest losses” states Lee, from Daily NK.

“It is emphasized that severe penalties will be imposed if theft or deception is detected. They are creating an atmosphere of fear”.

Kim Jong-un seems willing to admit the seriousness of the situation.

Last week, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told a parliamentary committee in a closed-door hearing that “Kim feels like he is walking on thin ice due to the economic situation,” according to deputies who were present at the hearing.

The intelligence also reported that the lack of medicines and other essential products has accelerated the spread of infectious diseases such as typhoid fever.

The growing concern has been amplified by the state media, which have highlighted the measures taken to prevent damage to crops and disseminated propaganda posters highlighting efforts in food production.

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Modern farms

North Korea has two main problems with its food supply.

The first is the methods he uses on his farms. Pyongyang has invested in military technology and missiles, but according to experts, it lacks the modern machinery needed for a quick and successful harvest.

Choi Yongho from the Korea Rural Economic Institute told us that “insufficient supply of agricultural machinery results in low productivity.”

We were able to see it with our own eyes.

From a new vantage point at the western tip of South Korea, with the opulent skyscrapers of Seoul as a backdrop, my team and I had a good view of the entrance to the Han River in North Korea. It feels so far and so close at the same time …

From this new lookout point in western South Korea, people can look north.

I heard a girl looking through binoculars say that the ones from the north were “the same people”.

“They are just like us”He said, as he jumped back to his mother.

The villagers on the other side, dozens of them, were busy gathering bales of rice and carrying them onto their backs onto a rather aging tractor.

A South Korean farmer in Paju, near the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries, said it took him an hour to collect rice from his fields with a machine. If you made it by hand like the ones in the north, it would take you a week.

A South Korean farmer works in a rice field with a machine.

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Highly vulnerable

But in addition to a lack of technology and supplies, North Korea faces another, more long-term problem.

The country has been included in the list that US intelligence draws up with the countries most vulnerable to the effects of global warming, and the limited area it has for its crops could be one of the hardest hit.

“Rice and maize production failures will become more common on the western coast“North Korea’s main food supply reserve, predicts Catherine Dill of the Strategic Risks Council and co-author of the recent report”Convergent crises in North Korea”.

Perhaps it is one of the reasons why Pyongyang sent its ambassador to the United Kingdom to the XXVI Summit on Climate Change that the UN is holding in Glasgow.

“North Korea is especially vulnerable to natural disasters. Flooding from monsoon rains and typhoons puts them in trouble every year, affecting crops and indirectly causing pest problems.“, dice Choi.

North Korea is very vulnerable to natural disasters.

The report of the “convergent crises”Says that things are going to get much worse in the coming years and rice production will be affected by droughts and floods.

“Stronger storms are already affecting North Korea, with prominent examples in the typhoon seasons of 2020 and 2021. And rising sea levels will increasingly put coastal areas at risk.”Says Dill.

Although Pyongyang rarely collaborates with the outside world, it has made regular exceptions with climate change and the environment and in producing detailed country reports in 2003 and 2012. Also has signed some international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.

One reason for this different attitude when it comes to climate change may be its impact on food production.

The UN found that the average temperature in North Korea increased by 1.9 ° C between 1918 and 2000, making it one of the fastest-warming countries in Asia.

According to a 2019 Green Climate Fund report, annual average temperatures in North Korea are expected to rise further, between 2.8-4.7 ° C, by the 2050s.

South Korea sees here an opportunity to work together on an issue that affects both of them.

South Korean Environment Minister Han Jeoung-ae told me last week that she hoped to meet her counterpart in Glasgow to discuss inter-Korean collaboration on climate change, but that has not happened.

If the North Korean delegation is listening to the speeches in Scotland, you will know that even as fear of this pandemic subsides and trade with China resumes, even as goods begin to flow across the border again, the country will face to a growing crisis that can profoundly affect an already vulnerable population.

And it cannot overcome this on its own.

* Additional information from Shreyas Reddy of BBC Monitoring.

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