Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-zh294 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-09T15:40:50.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

North Korea and the International Politics of Famine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

John Feffer
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Access to food is a basic human right. For several decades, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) prided itself on meeting the food needs of its population, although it has little arable land. Like many socialist countries, North Korea emphasized this success—along with high literacy rates, an equitable health care system, and guaranteed jobs for all—as proof that it upheld human rights, that its record in fact exceeded that of Western countries. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, a deteriorating economy and a steep rise in the cost of energy, followed in mid-decade by a series of natural disasters, undercut North Korea's capacity to feed its population. The public distribution system collapsed, and famine ensued. 1 Pyongyang appealed to its neighbors and then the world at large for help.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 9 , September 2006 , e20
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006

References

End Notes

1. There is some controversy over the use of the term “famine” to describe the food crisis that North Korea experienced in the 1990s. I use the term here to refer to “systematic starvation” as opposed to simply widespread hunger or malnutrition. As for the number of deaths attributable to this famine, it remains difficult to be precise, with figures cited anywhere between 200,000 and 3.5 million.

2. Interview with Erica Kang, December 7, 2005.

3. Jean Ziegler, “Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: The Right to Food,” Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/2001/53, February 7, 2001; accessed April 27, 2006.

4. Amnesty International, Starved of Rights: Food and Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), January 17, 2004; web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa2400320 04; accessed April 27, 2006.

5. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis (Seoul: Good Friends, March 2004); accessed April 27, 2006.

6. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea (Washington: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2005). Since the Haggard/Noland report has been widely cited in the press to highlight the issue of food and human rights in North Korea, it will serve as a touchstone for much of the following discussion. The Human Rights Watch report, though more recent, is not as comprehensive.

7. Human Rights Watch, A Matter of Survival: The North Korean Government's Control of Food and the Risk of Hunger (New York: Human Rights Watch, May 2006).

8. Given space limitations, this inquiry will not evaluate a range of human rights questions associated with the food crisis such as the situation of North Korean refugees in China and elsewhere, the upsurge in human trafficking, the tightening of restrictions on free speech, and allegations of a rise in torture and public executions.

9. Sang-Chul Suh, Growth and Structural Changes in the Korean Economy, 1910-1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 37.

10. On the importance of Japanese agricultural manuals in post-Korean War DPRK, see Balazs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 167.

11. Sanopi salaya nongopi sanda—industry must live for agriculture to live—was the expression in the North for the dependency of farmers on industrial inputs of energy and machinery. See L. Gordon Flake and Scott Snyder, Paved with Good Intentions (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).

12. Michael Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid (Munster: Lit Verlag, 1994), p. 97. North Korea has .11 hectares per capita compared to the United Kingdom's .12 and Israel's and Vietnam's .10. Randall Ireson calculates this ratio differently, arguing that North Korea has only .06 hectares of land suitable for grain and field crops per person. Even this more conservative estimate, though, puts North Korea slightly ahead of Japan and South Korea. Randall Ireson, Food Security in North Korea: Designing Realistic Possibilities (Stanford, CA: Shorenstein APARC, February 2006), p. 8.

13. Robert Burnett Hall, “Agricultural Region of Asia, Part VII—the Japanese Empire,” Economic Geography, vol. 11, no. 1, January 1935, p. 51.

14. Wonhyuk Lim, “North Korea's Food Crisis,” Korea and World Affairs, Winter 1997, p. 577.

15. Tai Sung An, North Korea: A Political Handbook (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1983), p. 129.

16. North Korea Business Fact Book (Seoul: Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, 2001), p. 37.

17. Ireson, Food Security in North Korea. On the soil erosion issue, see also Meredith Woo- Cumings, The Political Economy of Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons (Tokyo: Asian Development Bank, January 2002).

18. Human Rights Watch, A Matter of Survival, p. 8.

19. Andrew Holloway, A Year in Pyongyang, unpublished manuscript; accessed 10/30/04.

20. Jae Kyu Park, North Korea in Transition and Policy Choices: Domestic Structure and External Relations (Seoul: Kyungnam University Press, 1999), pp. 115, 118. According to Good Friends, the markets returned to once every 10 days in 1992, as the government sought to reassert control, only to revert again to daily in 1993 (Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, p. 36).

21. Marina Ye Trigubenko, “Economic Characteristics and Prospect for Development: With Emphasis on Agriculture,” in Han S. Park ed., North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), p. 156.

22. Jae-Jean Suh, “North Korea's Social System,” in Tae Hwan Ok and Hong Yung Lee, eds., Prospects for Change in North Korea (Seoul: Research Institute for National Unification, 1994), p. 247.

23. Andrew Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine (Washington: U.S. Institute for Peace, 2001), p. 166.

24. Marcus Noland argues that Pyongyang at this time “did not act in the way of a responsible government in the middle of a food crisis.” There is some truth to this assertion, though it does not take into account the various departments of the North Korean government and their differing motivations. Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.

25. Andrea Savada, ed., North Korea: A Country Study (Washington: Library of Congress, 1994), p. 139.

26. Sung-wook Nam, “Feeding the People: Possible Agricultural Normalization in North Korea,” East Asian Review, vol. 14, no. 3, Autumn 2002, p. 92.

27. Lim, “North Korea's Food Crisis,” p. 580.

28. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine, p. 141.

29. John Feffer, Korean Food, Korean Identity: The Impact of Globalization on Korean Agriculture (Stanford, CA: Shorenstein APARC, February 2005).

30. Ireson, Food Security in North Korea.

31. The Human Rights Watch report also develops this theme: “After a long period of unnecessary suffering, the government of Kim Jong Il belatedly allowed the limited opening of North Korea to foreign food aid …” Human Rights Watch, A Matter of Survival, p. 1.

32. Ibid., p. 27.

33. Interview with aid worker, December 9, 2005; see also Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 155.

34. Fiona Terry, “Feeding the Dictator,” The Guardian, August 6, 2001; accessed April 27, 2006.

35. Woo-Cumings, The Political Economy of Famine; Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (London: Verso, 2001).

36. Stephen Devereux, Theories of Famine (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 6.

37. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 2000).

38. Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee and Human Rights Watch/Asia, Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), December 1988. Marcus Noland points out that Helen-Louise Hunter described the classification system in her study of North Korea for the CIA in the early 1980s, but this material was only published in 1999 when her book Kim Il Sung's North Korea appeared from Praeger. Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.

39. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, p. 41.

40. Haggard and Noland, Hunger and Human Rights, p. 23.

41. According to AI's Rajiv Narayan, “The higher the strata of the person, the greater the possibility of the person being in Pyongyang or in areas of political power. This also meant better jobs for the party members and their families; and hence better privileges. This conclusion was corroborated by the testimonies we had collected.” He notes, however, that “there was not much reportage of the influence of the markets in North Korea around the time of the launch of the AI report to support the conclusion (that access of market matters).” Email correspondence with Rajiv Narayan, May 2, 2006.

42. Charles Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

43. Interview with Ruediger Frank, December 4, 2005.

44. Interview with Erica Kang, December 6, 2005.

45. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 111.

46. Andrei Lankov, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” Asia Policy, January p. 116.

47. Soon-Hee Lim, “The Food Crisis and Women's Lives in North Korea,” Presentation at the 2005 International Seminar on North Korean Human Rights, Seoul, South Korea, November 3, 2005.

48. Lankov, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” pp. 116-7.

49. Kyung Moon Hwang, Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).

50. Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.

51. Email correspondence with Richard Ragan, March 20, 2006.

52. UNICEF, “DPR Korea: Nutrition Assessment 2002,” February 20, 2003; accessed April 27, 2006.

53. Haggard and Noland, Hunger and Human Rights, p. 12.

54. Peter Singer, “Reconsidering the Famine Relief Argument” in Vernon Ruttan, ed., Why Food Aid? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 78.

55. It is important to note here that Haggard and Noland also echo this notion of effectiveness as a criterion. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Noland and Haggard Defend Food Aid Report,” CanKor, September 8, 2005; accessed May 24, 2006.

56. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 176.

57. Ziegler, “Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.”

58. Karin Lee and Adam Miles, “North Korea on Capitol Hill,” in John Feffer, ed., The Future of U.S.-Korean Relations (New York: Routledge, 2006).

59. Haggard and Noland, Hunger and Human Rights, p. 27.

60. Interview with Erica Kang, December 6, 2005.

61. Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.

62. Email correspondence with Richard Ragan, March 20, 2006.

63. Haggard and Noland, Hunger and Human Rights, p. 26.

64. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, pp. 60-1; Hazel Smith, Hungry for Peace (Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2005), pp. 87-8; Human Rights Watch, A Matter of Survival, p. 11.

65. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, p. 61.

66. Sung Min Kim, “Painful Life of People's Army,” Presentation at Seoul Summit: Human Rights in North Korea, Seoul, South Korea, December 2005, p. 154.

67. Andrew Natsios, The Politics of Famine in North Korea (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1999); accessed April 27, 2006.

68. Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 138.

69. Christopher Barrett and Daniel Maxwell, Food Aid After Fifty Years (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 141, 142.

70. Ibid., p. 142.

71. Moreover, as Alex de Waal argues, all international aid tends to increase the central power of government and create opportunities for corruption (De Waal, Famine Crimes, p. 136). Though difficult or impossible to measure, the level of corruption in North Korea rose in the late 1990s but did not approach the levels seen in other food crises, such as the 50% unaccounted losses in Somalia in 1991-1992 (De Waal, p. 168).

72. Christophe Reltien, “Humanitarian Action in North Korea: Ostrich Politics,” in The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000-2001: Hunger and Power (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 163.

73. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 168.

74. Interview with Erica Kang, December 6, 2005.

75. Smith, Hungry for Peace, p. 127.

76. Interview with aid worker, December 9, 2005.

77. ROK Ministry of Unification, Public Relations Policy Support, “ROK Refutes Report on Lack of Food Aid Transparency,” September 2, 2005.

78. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 233.

79. South Hamgyong and Ryanggang registered very high levels of stunting; South Hamgyong, North Hamgyong, and Ryanggang had the highest prevalence of underweight children; South and North Hamgyong exhibited high levels of wasting. Central Bureau of Statistics, Institute of Child Nutrition DPRK, “DRPK 2004 Nutrition Assessment Report of Survey Results,” NAPSNET, October 27, 2005.

80. Smith, Hungry for Peace, pp. 50-1.

81. Barbara Demick, “Trading Ideals for Sustenance,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2005.

82. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 168.

83. According to a World Food Program report from 1997: “An American ship, the bulk carrier M/V Judy Litrico, arrived at Nampo near Pyongyang on 29 June. While most of the cargo of 24,953 metric tons of cereals is being offloaded at Nampo, 8,000 metric tons is destined for Chongjin for July distributions in the northeast part of the country. The shipment will be the first food aid delivered directly to the northeast where aid agencies have not previously been able to operate.” In that year, too, according to the WFP report, “DPR Korean authorities have given WFP permission to open a sub-office in the northeastern port city of Chongjin, and have approved additional suboffices in Hamhung in the east, and in Sinuiju in the northwest near the Chinese border.” World Food Program Emergency Report, July 4, 1997; accessed April 27, 2006.

84. Interview with Wonhyuk Lim, March 10, 2006.

85. Email communication with Wonhyuk Lim, March 13, 2006; he supplied clippings from the South Korean press that catalog the shipments to Chongjin from June to August 1995.

86. Interview with Erica Kang, December 7, 2005.

87. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, pp. 28-33; Amnesty International, Starved of Rights, Section 5.2.

88. John Feffer, “Globalization and Militarization,” Foreign Policy In Focus, February 2002.

89. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

90. Wonhyuk Lim, “Challenging Assumptions about Food Aid for North Korea,” Dynamic Korea, February 13, 2006; accessed April 27, 2006.

91. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “A U-Turn on Reforms Could Starve North Korea,” International Herald Tribune, December 22, 2005.

92. Ruediger Frank, “Economic Reforms in North Korea (1998-2004),” Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, vol. 10, no. 3, August 2005, p. 283. Frank estimates a requirement of about 4.3 million tons of rice to meet 75% of the caloric needs of the population. This figure excludes seed requirements and loss due to storage and transportation, which would push the figure closer to 5 million tons. Frank also notes that if the population doesn't rely as heavily on grain for its calories, the figure goes back down to around 4.5 million tons. Email communication with Ruediger Frank, May 2, 2006.

93. Good Friends, North Korea Today, Issue 12, 2006, p. 3.

94. “Food Aid for North Korea,” The New York Times, May 11, 2006.

95. Choe Sang-hun, “Charity Sees Much Higher Toll from Huge North Korean Floods,” The New York Times, August 16, 2006.

96. Associated Press, “UN Says North Korean Crop Loss Heavy,” July 24, 2006.

97. Reuters, “S. Korea Red Cross Plans Rice Aid for North,” August 15, 2006.

98. Claudia Rosett, “Food for Nukes?” Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2006.

99. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Noland and Haggard Defend Food Aid Report,” CanKor, September 8, 2005; accessed May 24, 2006; Nicholas Eberstadt, “The Persistence of North Korea,” Policy Review, October 2004.

100. UNDP, Human Development Report 2000.

101. The consolidation of agricultural lands—”reprofiling”—alone boosts the amount of arable land by 10%. Alexander Vorontsov, “North Korea During the Process of Change,” Joint US-Korea Academic Studies, vol. 16, p. 149.

102. A system that gives the work team even greater control than the farm manager presages the same kind of privatization that took place in China in the 1980s. See Tae-Jin Kwon, “Agricultural Policies Under Reform in the DPRK,” IFES Forum, July 13, 2005.

103. Central Bureau of Statistics, “DPRK 2004 Nutrition Assessment.”

104. Interview with Erica Kang, December 7, 2005.

105. Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, p. 37.

106. Interview with aid worker, December 9, 2005.

107. Ruediger Frank, “Response by Ruediger Frank,” NAPSNET. September 13, 2005.

108. Interview with Ruediger Frank, December 4, 2005.

109. Natsios, The Politics of Famine in North Korea.

110. Smith, Hungry for Peace, p. 82.

111. In 2000, according to World Food Program data, NGOs sold 26% of their aid on the market in recipient countries. For bilateral assistance, the number was considerably higher: 73% (Barrett and Maxwell, Food Aid After Fifty Years, p. 15).

112. Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.

113. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, “Noland and Haggard Defend Food Aid Report.”

114. Good Friends, North Korea Today, Issue 12, 2006, pp.1-2.

115. World Food Program Emergency Report, November 25, 2005; accessed May 27, 2006.

116. Good Friends, North Korea Today, Issue 18 (2006).

117. Terry, “Feeding the Dictator.”

118. Haggard and Noland, Hunger and Human Rights.

119. Ibid., p. 35.

120. Ibid., p. 38.

121. Rosset, “Food for Nukes?”

122. Mark Manyin, “U.S. Assistance to North Korea: Factsheet,” Congressional Research Service, January 31, 2006.

123. Wonhyuk Lim, “When in Doubt, Blame South Korea,” NAPSNET Policy Forum On-line 06-13A, February 16, 2006.

124. Interview with Park Sun Song, December 8, 2005.

125. De Waal, Famine Crimes, p. 6.

126. Ruediger Frank, “Food Aid to North Korea or How to Ride a Trojan Horse to Death,” NAPSNET, September 13, 2005.

127. Vernon Ruttan, “The Politics of U.S. Food Aid Policy,” in Vernon Ruttan, ed., Why Food Aid? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 2.

128. Barrett and Maxwell, “Food Aid After Fifty Years,” p. 150.

129. Reltien, “Humanitarian Action in North Korea,” p. 166.

130. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1999.

131. ROK Ministry of Unification, “ROK Refutes Report.”

132. Schloms, North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid, p. 69.