There's a food crisis in North Korea. Starvation is rife, and the situation is likely to get worse.
Not to worry: the 7th Enlarged Plenary Meeting of 8th WPK Central Committee is on the case:
The great Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) is leading the revolutionary struggle to a new victory while overcoming the harsh situation, invariably holding aloft the banner of independence in politics, self-sustenance in the economy and self-reliance in national defence. This struggle is the greatest cause of making a fresh change and development in the course of certainly building Korean-style socialism, in which all the people live with nothing to envy.
The Party Central Committee, which is bringing earlier the future of socialist construction in our own way and with our own efforts from A to Z, set forth a medium and long-term strategy for the final solution of the rural question assuming the protracted and multi-faceted character at the historic Plenary Meeting in December Juche 110 (2021). After setting a grand economic development goal for national prosperity, it has confidently led the purposeful and phased struggle for its realization.
The plenary meeting of the WPK Central Committee had a discussion of historic significance to comprehensively analyze and review the work for 2022, the first year of implementing the programme for the rural revolution in the new era, and further concretize the important tasks and long-term objectives for putting the agricultural production on a stable and sustained growth track and the urgent tasks arising at the present stage of the national economic development and the practical ways for carrying them out….
Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, was present at the plenary meeting.
When General Secretary Kim Jong Un took the platform, all the participants broke into cheers of "Hurrah!", looking up to him who is developing the WPK into invincible vanguard ranks and dynamically opening up a bright future of the socialist cause with his profound ideo-theoretical wisdom and distinguished leadership activities.
The plenary meeting elected its presidium with relevant members of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee.
The Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee authorized Kim Jong Un to preside over the plenary meeting.
Kim Jong Un clarified the purpose of discussion at the 7th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the WPK and made an analysis and evaluation of the WPK Central Committee on the first year’s work for implementing the new programme for rural revolution.
He stressed that it is urgently necessary to find out and remove in time the internal factors that have negative effect on the development of agriculture, in order to definitely put the agricultural production on a stable track of development in the near future and substantially strengthen the political, ideological, material and technical foundations of the countryside.
The policies adopted at a recent plenary session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea have earned a cynical response from many people inside the country, Daily NK has learned.
“People haven’t been able to conceal their disappointment over the outcome of the meeting. In four days of discussion, officials didn’t manage to arrive at any meaningful measures,” a reporting partner in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
North Korean media reported on the results of the expanded plenary session, which was held from Feb. 26 to Mar. 1, and the authorities organized lectures to call on the public to carry out the initiatives adopted by the Central Committee. But according to Daily NK’s reporting partner, many North Koreans have responded cooly to government appeals to increase crop yield per field and to utilize more new machinery on farms, regarding those initiatives as unrealistic.
“One of the reasons that farm output has been falling over the past few years is because imports of fertilizer have been halted by the closure of the national border. Since the government is asking farmers to boost yields without even resolving the fertilizer issue, it’s no wonder that people aren’t enthusiastic about the government’s agenda,” the reporting partner told Daily NK.
“Watching this expanded plenary session, I got the impression that officials think that North Koreans are in poverty because they’re bad at farming. What I want to know is whether people have ever been allowed to eat their fill of corn after a good crop,” a resident of Hamhung was quoted as saying by the reporting partner.
“It seems pointless to ask people who are barely getting by amid the food shortage to produce more crops per field. In the end, the authorities are using farm preparations as an excuse to spread propaganda while ignoring the people’s complaints about the food shortage,” another Hamhung resident told the reporting partner.
“Sending us more farm machinery would be nice, but that should come after they’ve addressed the livelihood of the people supposed to run that machinery. People on the verge of starvation aren’t likely to do a great job,” yet another resident of Hamhung retorted.
“People are getting anxious about their livelihood because there’s been a sharp increase in families running low on food, with some even starving to death, although we haven’t even gotten to the ‘barley hump’ yet,” the reporting partner said, referring to the lean time of year before the spring harvest.
“People are enraged because the government spends all its energy on flashy events without bothering to find a fundamental solution to the food issue.”
Starvation: not good. People are enraged: good.
Mick Hartley 
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