Elsevier

Journal of Asian Economics

Volume 20, Issue 4, September 2009, Pages 384-395
Journal of Asian Economics

Famine in North Korea Redux?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2009.04.002Get rights and content

Abstract

In the 1990s, 600,000 to 1 million North Koreans, or about 3–5 percent of the pre-crisis population perished in one of the worst famines of the 20th century.

North Korea is once again poised on the brink of famine. Although the renewed provision of aid is likely to avert a disaster on the scale of the 1990s, hunger-related deaths are already occurring and a dynamic has been set in motion that will carry the crisis into the future.

North Korea is a complex humanitarian emergency characterized by highly imperfect information. This paper triangulates quantity and price evidence with direct observation to assess food insecurity in North Korea and its causes. We critique the widely cited UN figures and present original data on grain quantities and prices. These data demonstrate that for the first time since the 1990s famine, the aggregate grain balance has gone into deficit. Prices have also risen steeply. The reemergence of pathologies from the famine era is documented through direct observation. Although exogenous shocks have played a role, foreign and domestic policy choices have been key.

Introduction

Imperfect and asymmetric information pose an ongoing challenge to the management of complex humanitarian emergencies. Often for political reasons – including authoritarian rule, the breakdown of central authority or civil conflict – donors face problems assessing the causes and extent of distress in recipient countries. These conditions frustrate the formulation of effective relief strategies.

North Korea is an exemplar. During the 1990s, 600,000–1 million North Koreans, or about 3–5 percent of the pre-crisis population, perished in one of the worst famines of the 20th century. The closed nature of the regime made it nearly impossible for the outside world to recognize the onset of food distress and for aid to enter the country in a timely and targeted way.1

The country is again experiencing signs of severe food shortages, and although more information is available than in the past, it remains imperfect and politicized. The current cycle of distress can be traced to late 2005. On the back of improving harvests and generous outside aid, the government attempted to ban the private trade in grain; in doing so, it criminalized the primary mechanism through which most North Korean families obtained food. The regime also sought to revive the state run public distribution system (PDS) of quantity rationing, in part through confiscatory grain seizures in the rural areas.2 The government also threatened to expel the World Food Program (WFP), incapacitating the outside world's early warning system.

High politics has also played an important role in recent shortages. More than two-thirds of the grain consumed in North Korea is produced locally. Domestic production is highly dependent on fertilizer, however, much of which has been donated by South Korea in recent years. Following missile and nuclear tests in 2006, South Korea suspended fertilizer shipments; predictably, North Korean grain production fell. Food aid also dried up, in part as a result of general donor fatigue, and in South Korea's case because of a change of government and public disenchantment with open-ended aid. With global food prices rising sharply from late 2007, the regime's capacity to import grain on commercial terms was seriously impaired. Nonetheless, in early 2009 it was locked in acrimonious negotiations with donors over the terms of access and monitoring of aid that threatened to scuttle the program.

These policy-derived shocks were certainly exacerbated by adverse weather, as the country experienced flooding in 2006 and 2007, concentrated in grain growing regions of the southwest. But vulnerability to the weather was partly the result of past agricultural and land use policies, such as bringing marginal hillside land into cultivation and failure to invest adequately in flood control infrastructure. As this brief narrative suggests, exogenous shocks in the form of both weather and rising world prices must be seen in the context of a wider political economy that involves both foreign and domestic policy choices.

In this article, we triangulate between three sources of information—quantity balances, prices, and direct observation—to assess recent developments in North Korea's food economy and the fundamental causes of recurrent shortages. We begin in Section 2 with a reconstruction of aggregate food balances, and show that recently released United Nations estimates of the production shortfall are almost certainly exaggerated. Nonetheless, even after making appropriate adjustments, we find that for the first time since the 1990s famine the aggregate grain balance has gone into deficit. We show that the decline in aggregate supply predates the floods of 2007 and the onset of rising world food prices in 2007–2008, and is likely to continue despite the marginally improved harvest of 2008.

A central contribution of this paper is to match these aggregate balances with a consideration of the evolution of prices over the last three years; we take up this issue in Section 3. Prices have assumed increased salience due to fundamental changes in the North Korean food economy. The famine era collapse of the PDS encouraged entrepreneurial coping behavior and the emergence of markets. Food security is increasingly a function of household financial status as the PDS has receded in importance and food is increasingly accessed via the market.

Employing an original data set of more than 600 grain price observations, we map the path of prices against a number of potential drivers. We show that while exogenous shocks, including floods and rising world market prices, affect prices, reckless policies have played an important role as well. Moreover, some external constraints facing North Korea are themselves endogenous to political choices by the North Korean leadership, including those regarding relations with the WFP, the country's nuclear ambitions, and other foreign policy provocations. These foreign policy choices on the part of the North Korean leadership are responsible for cuts in South Korean food and fertilizer aid and a slowdown in American assistance, and thus have both directly and indirectly affected available grain supplies.

In Section 4, we supplement the food balances and price data with evidence from direct observation. Surveys conducted by aid agencies not only confirm the depletion of stocks and the collapse of PDS rations, but also document behaviors and outcomes associated with famine and near-famine conditions: increased foraging and consumption of inferior foods; declining health outcomes; and reduced school attendance.

Our analysis suggests a somewhat different approach to the political economy of famine than is visible in the extant literature. Rather than focusing solely on the domestic political determinants of famine, such as authoritarian rule (Sen, 1981) or the presence of anti-famine political compacts (de Waal, 1997), we also need to consider how governments relate to the outside world. The availability of food during periods of stress is not limited to domestic sources of supply. However, countries vary significantly in the extent to which they are willing and able to avail themselves of imports, both in the form of aid and on commercial terms. In North Korea's case, an autarckic development strategy has played a key role in limiting the ability of the country to adjust to food shortages through increased commercial imports. Moreover, the country's confrontational foreign policy and posture toward donors is directly implicated in recent shortages by limiting both aid and trade opportunities.

Section snippets

Food balances

The conventional starting point for assessing food needs is a quantity balance sheet.3 Total need consists of requirements for human consumption, seed, feed, industrial uses (including the manufacture of alcohol), and losses and spoilage. Domestic supply consists of production and any drawdown on accumulated stocks. The gap between domestic needs and supply is the uncovered

Evidence from prices

A consideration of prices provides additional information both on the extent of distress and some of its causes. North Korean authorities impede the collection and dissemination of price data. Nonetheless, increasingly active NGOs and the growing availability of cell phones in the Chinese border region have facilitated the monitoring of price trends. These data are assembled primarily from observations reported in Good Friends’ publication North Korea Today, NKNet's NK In & Out, and other

Direct observation

The quantity and price evidence presented thus far can be used to make indirect inferences about distress in North Korea. Obviously, it would be desirable to have direct observation, particularly in the North Korean case where considerable evidence documents the non-uniformity of distress across geographical regions and political–economic classes. Unfortunately, the North Korean government systematically impedes access of foreign observers, including relief agencies, rendering even their

Conclusion

This paper has examined three sorts of evidence—quantity, price, and direct observation—concerning the evolution of the North Korean food economy. Three conclusions stand out. In 2008 the aggregate balance between grain requirements and supply slipped into deficit for the first time since the 1990s famine. The decline in aggregate sources of supply is not simply the result of exogenous shocks, but of the decline in aid, which in turn reflects diplomatic conflicts between North Korea and the

References (30)

  • Anderson, P., & Majarowitz, P. (2008). Rapid Food Security Assessment North Pyongan and Chagang Provinces. Democratic...
  • DailyNK. (2007–2008). DailyNK newletters, various issues. Available from URL:...
  • A. de Waal

    Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa

    (1997)
  • N. Eberstadt

    The North Korean economy

    (2007)
  • Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme (FAO/WFP). (1996a). Special Alert No. 270 Democratic...
  • Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme (FAO/WFP). (1996b). Special Report—FAO/WFP Crop and Food...
  • Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme (FAO/WFP). (1997). Special Alert No. 275 FAO.WFP Crop and...
  • Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme (FAO/WFP). (2003). Special Report—FAO/WFP Crop and Food...
  • Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme (FAO/WFP). (2004). Special Report—FAO/WFP Crop and Food...
  • Good Friends. (2004–2008). North Korea Today newsletters, various...
  • Good Friends
    (2008 May 13)
  • S. Haggard et al.

    Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform

    (2007)
  • S. Haggard et al.

    Authors’ Response: Famine in North Korea—a Reprise

    Asia Policy

    (2008)
  • Haggard, S., Noland, M., & Weeks, E. (2008). North Korea on the Precipice of Famine, Policy Brief Number PB08-6....
  • Institute for Far Eastern Studies. (2007–2008). NK Brief. Kyungnam University, various...
  • Cited by (22)

    • Is there decentralization in North Korea? Evidence and lessons from the sloping land management program 2004–2014

      2017, Land Use Policy
      Citation Excerpt :

      During the 1990s, North Korea’s economic decline and extreme weather conditions involving floods and droughts catastrophically reduced agricultural production and compromised the central government’s ability to supply food to the nation’s rural people (Xu et al., 2012). In the late 1990s, the country was famished and it has since battled an on-going food crisis that has been exacerbated by adverse weather events and geopolitical shocks (Noland et al., 2001; Haggard and Noland, 2009). Severe flooding occurred across the country during 2006 and 2007, and also in 2006 external aid was cut following the government’s controversial missile and nuclear tests (Haggard and Noland, 2009).

    • Turning electricity into food: The role of renewable energy in the future of agriculture

      2013, Journal of Cleaner Production
      Citation Excerpt :

      An example of these negative effects can be found with North Korea, which is at the same time a poor country and a country which has applied the principles of the “Green Revolution” that is, it has transformed its agriculture into a system which heavily relies on fossil fuels; in particular for fertilizers. As a consequence North Korea is especially vulnerable to high prices in the fossil fuel market and has experienced a series of periodic famines occurring every time when the price of fossil fuels forced North Korean farmers to reduce the input of fertilizers (Haggard and Noland, 2009). It seems, therefore, that the gradual reduction of fossil fuel availability and their increasing costs will create enormous problems to the world's agriculture.

    • Reform from below: Behavioral and institutional change in North Korea

      2010, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
    • From patriarchal socialism to grassroots capitalism: The role of female entrepreneurs in the transition of North Korea

      2018, Women's Studies International Forum
      Citation Excerpt :

      The North Korean economy shrunk by approximately 30% between 1991 and 1996 (Jung & Dalton, 2006, p. 741), causing a crippling famine. While estimates vary, it is thought that between 600,000 and one million people, equating to roughly three to 5% of the country's pre-famine population, died as a consequence of the famine (Haggard & Noland, 2009, p. 384). Given its highly authoritarian and repressive political system, its command economy and closed society, some may question the characterisation of North Korea as experiencing any kind of transition at all.

    • North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism

      2023, North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text