Mick Hartley

Well now. After my post this morning on North Korea's weed problem, and the distinct possibility of a major famine, here's a piece that's just appeared in the Times:

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has admitted that the food situation nationally is “tense”, sounding the alarm in a country that suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s and periodic shortages of staples.

The country, which is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, has long struggled to feed itself, and the coronavirus pandemic and a series of summer storms and floods have added more pressure on the flagging economy.

“The people’s food situation is now getting tense as the agricultural sector failed to fulfil its grain production plan due to the damage by typhoon last year,” Kim told a meeting of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

Kim has recently shed weight, with observers noting that his watch strap is now buckled more tightly than it was a few months ago. That may suggest that he is aware that his corpulent appearance is unlikely to play well in the midst of food shortages….

A series of typhoons last summer triggered floods that destroyed thousands of homes and inundated farmland. Kim called for steps to minimise the impact of such natural disasters, saying that ensuring a good harvest was a “top priority”. The meeting discussed the “prolonged nature” of the coronavirus pandemic too, KCNA reported.

The North imposed a strict lockdown when it sealed its border in January last year to stop the virus spreading from neighbouring China, where it first emerged before sweeping the world. It has insisted that it has had no cases of the virus, which is widely thought to be a spurious claim.

However, trade with China, the North’s economic lifeline, has slowed to a trickle, while all international aid work faces tight restrictions.

The impact of the pandemic has “most likely exacerbated” the humanitarian situation in the North, with some 10.6 million people in need, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In another admission of the North’s hardship, Kim in April told citizens to buckle down for the “worst-ever situation”. The nationwide famine that North Korea suffered in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands of people after the fall of the Soviet Union left it without crucial support.

Meanwhile the official Rodong Sinmun gives us yet another panegyric to the wonders being achieved in the world of socialist weeding – Their Corn Fields Weeded with Might and Main:

Great successes are achieved in weeding the corn fields day after day through a hot socialist emulation among cooperative farms, their workteams and their subworkteams.

Awakened to their responsibility for the foremost sector of the nation for the defence of their socialism the officials and agricultural workers of the province and their helpers as well ceaselessly score one success after another in weeding their corn fields.

Things must be really getting desperate.