North Korean Food Insecurity: Is Famine on the Horizon?

Noland, Marcus (2022): North Korean Food Insecurity: Is Famine on the Horizon? Published in: Asia Pacific Issues No. 154 (22 August 2022)

Abstract

North Korea is a complex humanitarian emergency with food insecurity at its core. Data on grain prices and quantities depict a deteriorating situation, made worse by the regime’s self-isolating response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The grain supply appears to have fallen below minimum human needs, but the situation is neither as dire as the 1990s famine nor as severe as conditions elsewhere in the world today. Food insecurity in North Korea is not only a humanitarian issue, but it is a strategic issue as well. From the perspective of donors, given the lack of regime accountability, at the present time aid is unlikely to be an effective lever in achieving other diplomatic goals, nor does North Korea appear to be the potential recipient of greatest need.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: food security; famine; complex humanitarian emergency; North Korea; food prices
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; P - Economic Systems > P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture

References

Bermudez, Joseph S. Jr., Victor Cha, Andy Dinville and Jennifer Jun. 2021. “Assessing Fall 2021 Agricultural Conditions in North Korea,” https://beyondparallel.csis.org/assessing-fall-2021-agricultural-conditions-in-north-korea/ Accessed 13 October 2021.

Furukawa, Katsuhisa, Veronica Bedenko, Jaewoo Shin, and Xu Tianran. 2021. “Assessment of the Impact of August 2021 Rainfall and Flooding in the DPRK,” One Earth Future, https://opennuclear.org/publication/assessment-impact-august-2021-rainfall-and-flooding-dprk accessed 13 October 2021.

Haggard, Stephan, and Marcus Noland. 2007. Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Columbia University Press: New York.

Haggard, Stephan and Marcus Noland. 2009. “Famine in North Korea Redux?,” Journal of Asian Economics, 20(4): 384-395.

Haggard, Stephan and Marcus Noland. 2017. Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements, and the Case of North Korea. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lee, Suk. 2011. “Analysis on 2008 Census of North Korea and Problems,” Seoul: Korea Development Institute. https://www.kdi.re.kr/kdi_eng/publications/publication_view.jsp?pub_no=12403 Accessed 1 October 2021.

Smith, Hazel. 2008. North Korea as the Wicked Witch of the East: Social Science as Fairy Tale. Asia Policy. 5 pp. 197-203.

Smith, Heather. 1998. The Food Economy: Catalyst for Collapse? In: Economic Integration of the Korean Peninsula, (ed Noland, Marcus) pp. Institute for International Economics: Washington.

World Food Programme. 2022. “HungerMapLIVE: Global insights and key trends,” 11 July 2022 https://static.hungermapdata.org/insight-reports/latest/global-summary.pdf accessed 11 July 2022.