Source: Strange Sounds

The warnings are stark and coming from inside and outside of North Korea. Defectors based in South Korea have told us that their families in the North are going hungry. There is a concern as winter approaches that the most vulnerable will starve.

“Problems such as more orphan children on the streets and death by starvation are continuously being reported,” said Lee Sang Yong, editor in chief of the Daily NK, which has sources in North Korea.

“The lower classes in North Korea are suffering more and more,” as food shortages are worse than expected, Mr. Lee said.

Getting information out of North Korea is increasingly difficult. The border has been closed since January last year to prevent the spread of Covid-19 from China. Even getting messages out of the country to family and friends who have defected to South Korea comes at a huge risk.

Anyone caught with an unauthorized mobile phone could be thrown into a labor camp. And yet some still try to send letters or voice mail via text to their loved ones and to publications in Seoul.

Through these sources, some of which have to remain anonymous, we have tried to build a picture of what is going on.

Food shortages in North Korea

North Korea has always struggled with food shortages, but the pandemic has made a bad situation worse. Leader Kim Jong-un has compared the current situation to the country’s worst disaster in the 1990s, known as the “Arduous March”, where hundreds of thousands of people died in a famine.

The situation is not thought to be that bad – yet. There are some hopeful signs. North Korea appears to be preparing to re-open the border with China, but it’s unclear how much trade and aid will be needed to repair the economic damage already wrought on the impoverished country.

This year’s harvest is crucial. Last year’s crops were partly destroyed by a series of typhoons. The United Nations estimates that the country is short of at least two to three months’ supply of food.

Everyone in the fields, even the army!

To ensure this year is as successful as possible, tens of thousands of people have been sent into the fields to help gather rice and corn, including the army.

Kim Jong-un has also reportedly ordered that every grain of rice in the country is to be secured and that everyone who eats should go and help with the harvest.

“A plan has been devised to minimize losses in the harvesting process,” said Mr. Lee, from the Daily NK.

“It emphasizes that strict punishment will be imposed if theft or cheating is reported. It’s creating an atmosphere of fear.”

Spread of typhoid fever

Last week, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told a closed-door parliamentary hearing that Mr. Kim said he felt he was “walking on thin ice due to the economic situation,” according to lawmakers at the briefing.

The NIS also reportedly said the lack of medicine and essential supplies has accelerated the spread of infectious diseases such as typhoid fever.

This growing concern has been amplified by state media, which has highlighted measures being taken to prevent crop damage and released propaganda posters emphasising efforts to work on food production.

North Korea faces two major issues with its food supply

The first is its farming methods. Pyongyang may have invested in new military technology and missiles, but it lacks the modern machinery needed for a speedy and successful harvest, according to experts.

Choi Yongho from the Korean Rural Economic Institute told us that “the insufficient supply of agricultural equipment results in low food productivity.”

We managed to see this for ourselves.

From a new lookout point in the western tip of South Korea, with the affluent skyscrapers of Seoul as a backdrop, my team and I got a good view over the Han River into North Korea. It feels so close – and yet so far.

I heard one young girl remark through her binoculars that they were the “same people.”

“They’re just like us,” she said, as she bounced back to her mum.

The villagers, dozens of them, were busy creating bails of rice and carrying them on their backs to a rather run-down tractor.

A South Korean farmer in Paju, near the demilitarized zone which separates the two countries, said it took him an hour to strip his fields of rice with a machine. If he’d done it by hand, as it’s done in the North, he said one field would take him a week.

As shown in the video below, the last North Korean famine left hundreds of thousands of North Koreans dead and millions more hungry and malnourished. It also changed the peoples’ relationship with the regime forever. Watch North Koreans talk about how the famine-affected their lives and views of the regime.

Extreme weather events

But along with the lack of technology and farming supplies, North Korea is facing a much longer-term problem if it wants to secure its food supply.

The country has been listed by US intelligence agencies as one of 11 countries most vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather cycles, and the limited area it has to grow crops could be the hardest hit.

“Rice and maize yield failures will become more likely along the western coastline, which is North Korea’s historical breadbasket,” said Catherine Dill, from the Council on Strategic Risks – one of the authors of a recent report on ‘Converging Crises in North Korea’.

“North Korea is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Flood, monsoon rains, and typhoons trouble them every year which directly affects yield and indirectly causes pest problems,” said Mr. Choi.

This situation may get much worse in years to come and rice production, in particular, will be affected by droughts and flooding.

“More intense storms already appear to be affecting North Korea, there are really prominent examples of this in both the 2020 and 2021 typhoon seasons. And in terms of sea-level rise, coastal areas are going to be increasingly at risk,” Ms Dill said.

This video shows actual footage of ordinary lives in North Korea

North Korea is about to collapse in one of its worst food crisis ever. And many will starve to death! [BBC]

Now subscribe to this blog to get more amazing news curated just for you right in your inbox on a daily basis (here an example of our new newsletter).

You can also follow us on Facebook and/ or Twitter. And, by the way you can also make a donation through Paypal. Thank you!

You should really subscribe to QFiles. You will get very interesting information about strange events around the world.