Food Insecurity Definition

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines “food insecurity” as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.”

According to the USDA’s 2020-2030 International Food Security Assessment, “an estimated 59.2 percent of North Korea’s population is food-insecure in 2020, rising slightly to 59.8 percent when the effects of the COVID-19 macro shock are taken into account.” That is approximately 15.3 million people or three in five North Koreans.

Worst Decline in Recent History

We shared our concerns in January about North Korea potentially entering into yet another famine.

The Financial Times reported in February that North Korea was facing the worst economic decline since the infamous North Korean famine of the 90’s. “Following a triple hit from the strict border closures, economic sanctions and devastating flooding last year, the economy is suffering its worst decline since famine killed millions of people in the mid-1990s”

In March, Geneva-based Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) rated the severity of North Korea’s Humanitarian Conditions 4.5 out of 5, which is a “measure of conditions and status of the people affected, including info about the distribution of severity”. “The ACAPS report estimated “chronic food insecurity and limited access to basic services, such as healthcare and clean water, have left more than 10 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.”

Admitted Failings of Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un addressed party members in a political conference this past April and stated that the nation was facing its “worst-ever situation.” The North Korean dictator was likely making reference to the catastrophic failure of his five-year plan introduced in May 2016 that promised to bring North Korea to economic independence.

Experts are referring to North Korea’s current economic crisis in the pandemic as “the Great Leap Backwards” as the nation is struggling to respond to fears of economic collapse, complete loss of food security, and inability to vaccinate its 25 million citizens.

Urgent Party Central Committee Meeting

North Korea’s state-run news outlet Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) recently announced the call for another, larger political meeting called a plenum in early June. Kim Jong Un reportedly stressed the necessity to call a plenary meeting to “solve pending problems urgent for the economic work and people’s living.” All these items could point to a country in distress and panic.

Tighter Control with Closed Borders

North Korea was quick to respond to COVID-19 by completely sealing its borders to all foreigners, including trade, tourism and international relations. According to Daminov Ildar of The Diplomat, this also meant “no defections, no migration, no dangerous external information coming from abroad.” This enabled the North Korean government to enforce a greater measure of censorship as “every single product that entered North Korea in 2020 was thoroughly checked and paranoidally disinfected, while most goods were not even allowed to come in.”

This also shrank the number of North Korean defectors entering into South Korea, which dropped nearly 80% year-over year from 1,047 (2019) to 229 (2020). This is easily the fewest North Korean defectors since The Ministry of Unification began publishing this metric in 1998.

Another Famine?

The world does not have an accurate count of how many North Koreans died between 1994 and 1998 during the great North Korean famine. Higher estimates speculate that two to three million North Koreans perished during this period. The famine also exposed cracks in North Korean ideologies and its system of misinformation. Disenfranchised with the government and out of the need to survive, an informal free market system emerged and continues to be used as farmers markets and black markets throughout North Korea.

Survivors of the North Korean famine may be able to help their fellow North Koreans endure another season of scarcity with past learnings. But with heightened government security brought on by COVID-19 resulting in even less access to the outside world, Kim Jong Un and his regime may also be opportunistically purging liberties that have seeped in since the last famine. Another famine could be an excuse for the government to further constrict North Korean people and inflict more suffering.