The 69th Peace & Sharing Policy Forum took place in the Korean Sharing Movement conference room on June 3rd. Over 40 participants crowded into the room as the topic had been headline news in South Korea the previous week. Kim Young-su, a professor at Sogang University in Seoul, who is also part of the Korean Sharing Movement's policy advisory board, moderated proceedings. Dr. Kim Young-hoon, a chief researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, spoke about humanitarian food assistance to North Korea and the latest food situation there in a presentation entitled 'Spring 2019, the food situation in North Korea’. This had drawn hot interest in South Korea after the WFP and the UNDP highlighted concerns about the DPRK's food security in 2019 with the public guessing as to what would be the Moon government's response to the news.
The presentation was divided into two parts. In the first phase, Dr. Kim explained the latest overall food situation in North Korea. In the latter section, the expert detailed the landscape of humanitarian food assistance through international organizations and domestic South Korean NGOs.
Dr. Kim assessed the current food shortage in North Korea as chronic. North Korea gradually restored its crop yield from 2010 (3.6 million tons) to 2018 (4.55 million tons). However, North Korea has still not yet fully normalized its crop yield to the totals that were recorded before the Arduous March. Dr. Kim said the humanitarian food assistance toward North Korea has been shrinking so that it has a harmful impact on the food situation in North Korea. He added that the total lack of required food for North Korea citizens is estimated at around 1.2 million tons according to the joint report from FAO and the WFP in 2019.
Dr. Kim insisted that the co-existence of the current food deficiency problem despite noteworthy continued stabilization of the price of rice is not contradictory. Despite continued marketization in North Korea, the food sector remains the least privatized. Even if some markets which trade foods for necessities or sell for money have quietly developed, theoretically, the food trade remains illegal in North Korea. The small amount of black market activity is not enough to affect the price of rice or some staple crops. Secondly, citizens of North Korea procure food in many ways, and not only through markets. For example, North Korean citizens often exchange necessities for food directly person to person. This type of personal exchange does not influence the food price in North Korea. Lastly, most North Korea citizens have come to eat more wheat and canned food in 2019 than in the past. While this is naturally due to shortages in rice, North Koreans have been quick to adapt to a more diverse food culture as the borders have become more porous. This diversification of food intake has also had an impact on stopping the rice price of North Korea from increasing.
He added that the provisions of the public distribution system (PDS) have declined since 2018. Nevertheless, in order to continue to provide something for the most marginalized, North Korea maintains the operation of the PDS.
There are some inherent reasons why North Korea continues to experience recurrent food security problems. First of all, Kim pointed out the fact that only 17% of North Korea's territory is arable. Secondly, the lack of functioning agricultural machines or fuel and the weak production base (not enough electricity to run farm machinery, land degradation, insufficient fertilizers to enrich land) make a bad situation worse. Furthermore, deforestation problems and a lack of incentive when undertaking collective farming from farmers hinders the improvement of crop productivity. The final reason suggested explaining the continual food security problem was a lack of capital. Kim said that North Korea has carried out three reform measures to boost agricultural productivity in the past, but they failed to increase productivity due to a lack of capital.
The second topic, about the situation of domestic and foreign food assistance to North Korea, was very informative for those gathered. The government of South Korea provided a total of 3.36 million tons of food (rice, corn, and flour) to the North during the period of 1995 to 2007. Food aid alleviated the humanitarian situation in North Korea, whilst also having a great effect in reducing storage costs of surplus rice internally in South Korea. During these 12 years, 2.6 million tons of aid was provided as loans and 767 thousand tons was ‘no strings’ assistance.
International society's food aid towards North Korea has been gradually declining since peaking at 1.43 million tons in 2001. Regardless of the retreat of international organizations from North Korea, many International Organizations have systemized programmes to handle the humanitarian situation in the aftermath of natural disasters more so than Korean NGOs. Dr. Kim stated that even if lots of local NGOs specialize in humanitarian assistance aimed at providing food to North Korea at present, only a few domestic groups are planning to organize humanitarian assistance models in response to urgent situations such as natural disasters (as currently established by international organizations).
Finally, Dr. Kim proposed that the legitimacy of future food aid to North Korea can be improved by increasing transparency through closer observation in the distribution of food aid and also wiping out the 2.6 million tons of food bonds loans at the earliest date possible.
Dr. Kim’s presentation was followed by an hour long question and answer session with many questions from the audience about South Korea’s role moving forward. Despite the President Moon administration’s pledge to provide 8 million dollars in rice on June 5th, no official food assistance has yet been provided bilaterally. Concurrently the Korean Sharing Movement and KNCCK campaign for food assistance from civil society started on May 14th is ongoing. The Korean Sharing Movement regards food assistance delivered from South Korean civil society as important in not just alleviating the food security situation in the DPRK but also as significantly important in developing a positive atmosphere for inter-Korean cooperation.
