Mick Hartley

North Korea agreed to reopen its hotline to South Korea last week. Naturally South Korean president Moon is keen to present this as a diplomatic breakthrough, but it's more likely to be a sign of North Korea's desperate food shortage, with Pyongyang playing nice in the hope of food aid. And Kim Jong-un's grim-faced sister was at pains to play down the significance:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister Yo-jong, who frequently acts as her brother's attack dog, in a statement on Sunday night called for an end to planned South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises.

Pyongyang "will closely follow whether the South Korean side stages hostile war exercises in August or makes other bold decision," she said.

The U.S. and South Korea are staging a scaled-down military exercise later this month.

"The restoration of the communication liaison lines should not be taken as anything more than just a physical reconnection," Kim Yo-jong fumed. "Hasty speculation and groundless interpretation will only bring despair."

Meanwhile, from the Daily NK:

The food shops recently established by the North Korean government to control the supply and price of rice have little or no rice to sell, Daily NK has learned. 

According to multiple Daily NK sources in North Korea recently, state food shops across the country continue to open their doors and staff show up to work, but they have nothing to sell.

And what happens when you criticise the Supreme Leader:

A high-ranking military cadre was reportedly executed for the crime of criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent “special order” to supply food to the people as “unrealistic.”

A source in North Korea told Daily NK on Wednesday the major general in charge of the logistics headquarters of Training Camp 815 was court-martialed and shot on July 18 after he criticized Kim’s special order as “an order ignorant of reality.”

Kim’s special order called for the release of military stores of rice for public distribution.

According to the source, people learned of the execution after the authorities sent a “notification” to military officers ranked department head and above. Sent on July 22, the notification detailed recent examples of “stern judgments.”

The notification said that after receiving the special order from the ruling party, the commander “indiscreetly” complained that “military granaries are facing more serious problems than the food [shortage] issue facing the people.” 

He also reportedly said: “If they’re going to squeeze us while remaining ignorant of the situation in lower-level rear areas, from where on earth are we going to produce all that rice, not sand from the river bed?” By criticizing Kim’s supposedly insufficient sense of reality, he basically became a “sectarian” in the view of the authorities.

By openly describing the events in the notification, the authorities apparently intend to spark fear and emphasize that “those who outright challenge party policy will receive no forgiveness, regardless of who they are.” It also suggests that the authorities want to set straight conspicuously flagging military discipline, even with military rice stores empty.

Relatedly, Kim — who belatedly learned how bad things were with military stores of rice after the June 29 enlarged meeting of the politburo — ordered the punishment of high-ranking cadres in charge, while simultaneously instructing the military’s Political Guidance Department and Military Security Command to inspect conditions in the low-level logistics units.

Moreover, by punishing cadres, Kim seemingly intends to turn attention away from his own loss of face in ordering “three months of food provisions” without first ascertaining the state of military food stocks. This means Kim plans to minimize risk by turning the situation into a political and ideological issue regarding the military’s logistics commanders.

There is talk of a “bloodbath” of purges and sackings in the name of “drawing out the ideological poison of military sectarianism.”

I compared the situation the other day with China's Great Leap Forward, when some 40 million starved to death thanks to Mao's disastrous agricultural policies. This now is more like the Cultural Revolution, when Mao turned the tables on his critics by launching a violent purge to eliminate all ideological enemies.