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Structured Abstract Article Type: Research Paper Purpose—To examine the changing health and nutritional status of the North Korean population since the famine of the mid–1990s and the dominant perspective that little has changed since in the DPRK. Design, Methodology, Approach—Using hitherto neglected data from major international organizations, this research charts the little-known changes in patterns of food availability and food accessibility in aggregate, national terms, with some disaggregation of the data by gender and age. The DPRK is compared to other poor countries, other Asian countries and near neighbors in East Asia. Findings—Despite a precarious economy, the end of systematic food provision by the government, and a decline in aid from international organizations after 2001, the data shows that by the mid–2010s, national levels of severe wasting, an indication of famine-like conditions in the population, were lower than in other low income countries globally and lower than those prevailing in other developing countries in East Asia and the Pacific. Poverty and ill-health remained—as shown especially in terms of maternal health and infant mortality—but the incidence of malaria sharply declined and although the incidence of tuberculosis was up, the numbers of fatalities from both malaria and TB sharply declined. Practical Implications—This research contributes to a shift in North Korean Studies from securitized, opinion-based discussions in which North Koreans are either " victims or villains, " and which very often obscures or ignores mundane but important facts on the ground, towards careful, qualified, data-based analysis of societal change in the post-famine era of marketization in the DPRK. Originality, Value—The research shows that post-famine DPRK is not the out-lier state that is commonly presented in scholarly, policy and global media analysis.
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Global Asia, 2021
global asia Cover story Revealing Change in Kim Jong Un's North Korea An ongoing challenge in the decades-long international search for stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula has been a widespread lack of knowledge and understanding about what's actually going on in North Korea. In this issue of Global Asia, we have reached out to a dozen specialists on the country across a wide range of issues to shed much needed light on this vital topic.
The use of aid, and governance in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) during the famine. In this essay, we will look at the relation between aid and governance, and we will study the case of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea during the famine, from 1994 to 1998. We will see that the aid received by the international community did not encourage good governance for the country's development and economic growth. We indicate that the famine was caused by political governance, lack of food access, and not caused by lack of food supply. Furthermore, we show that the North Korean regime used the aid provided to sustain the regime and to keep its population under control, rather than to feed its population.
Journal of Cold War Studies, 2020
This article, based on newly available materials from the former Soviet archives, deals with the famine that struck a large part of the North Korean countryside in the winter of 1954–1955. The famine was related to the policies of crash industrialization and collectivization favored by Kim Il-sung—or at least, this is how many contemporaries, including Soviet diplomats, saw it. The famine, mentioned only once in openly available publications of the period, sparked political instability and prompted the urgent delivery of food assistance from the USSR and China. Soviet leaders, seeing the famine as another sign of the dangerous trends of Kim Il-Sung's policies, gave Pyongyang strong “advice,” demanding a moderation of policies and partial halt of the collectivization drive. The “advice” was followed, but the entire confrontation contributed to the further buildup of tensions between Moscow and Kim Il-Sung.
2008
North Korea is conventionally understood to be a kind of "black hole" about which very little can be known-the proverbial riddle wrapped in an enigma. 1 Haggard and Noland have demonstrated that this is not the case; a lack of information can no longer be used as an excuse for bad policy. By assembling most of the credible sources of information (though limited primarily to English sources) and carefully cross-checking data and claims, with Famine in North Korea the authors have provided perhaps the most comprehensive description and rigorous analysis yet of the North Korean famine, its political-economic context, and its aftermath. They have also posed the key questions that must be addressed if the right lessons are to be drawn and good future policies to be developed. These questions include: What caused the famine? Should large-scale assistance have been provided under the constraints imposed by Pyongyang? What has been the impact of food aid both on the population and on the North Korean system? What is the ultimate solution to the economic decline and continuing food scarcity? How should we deal with the North Korean regime in the future? The authors clearly identify the North Korean political and economic system as the ultimate cause of the persistent shortage of food and of the overall decline of the economy. This implies that the long-term solution to the problem lies neither in maintaining aid flows nor merely in agricultural restructuring but rather in implementing domestic economic reform and expanding commercial trade relations. The major multilateral and NGO aid agencies that responded to the famine understood, or quickly came to 1 The full text of Winston Churchill's description of Russia in 1939 is quite useful for analyzing North Korea today: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. " See Winston Churchill, speech, October 1, 1939, CHAR 9/138/46, Churchill papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge u http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/gallery/Russia/ CHAR_09_138_46.php. edward p. reed is Korea Representative of The Asia Foundation based in Seoul. From 1994 to 2000 he directed North Korea humanitarian aid programs for two NGOs, making over twenty monitoring visits to the North during that time. From 2000 to 2004 he was Associate Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published several articles on humanitarian and development assistance to North Korea. He may be reached at <ereed@asiafound.org>.
ABSTRACT: This article examines the articulation of individual and collective social suffering through oral accounts of famine survivors from North Korea. The 1990s famine, resulting from both economic and political factors, was the first time North Korea experienced a significant internal threat to sovereignty. Restrictions on talk about famine, hunger and starvation were so commonplace that these words were barely in use. Print media educated the population in acceptable ways to discuss the food shortage and this was reinforced through threats and violence. Despite these threats, oral accounts reveal that some free communication emerged. Grounded in original ethnographic research with famine survivors, living in Seoul and Tokyo, the present article explores these expressions and considers how individuals found a means of agency despite the repression of the regime. Keywords: North Korea, famine, survival, communication styles.
Understanding Kim Jong-un’s North Korea: Regime Dynamics, Negotiation, and Engagement, 2022
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 2001
In complex emergencies, especially those involving famine and/or wide-spread food insecurity, assessments of malnutrition are critical to understanding the population's health status and to assessing the effectiveness of relief interventions. Although the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has benefited from some of the largest, most sustained appeals in the history of the World Food Program (WFP), the government in Pyongyang has placed restrictions on international efforts to gather data on the health and nutritional status of the affected population.Question:Lacking direct means to assess the nutritional status of the North Korean populace, what other methodologies could be employed to measure the public health impacts of chronic food shortage?The paper begins with a review of methods for assessing nutritional status, particularly in emergencies; a brief history of the North Korean food crisis (1995–2001), and a review of the available nutritional and health data...
Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2012
This article discusses North Korea as a case of state-induced famine, or faminogenesis. A famine from 1994 to 2000 killed 3-5% of North Korea's population, and mass hunger reappeared in 2010-2012, despite reforms meant to address the shortage of food. In addition, a prison population of about 200,000 people is systematically deprived of food; this might be considered penal starvation. There seems little recourse under international law to punish the perpetrators of state-induced famine and penal starvation. State-induced famine does, however, fit some of the criteria of genocide in the United Nations Convention against Genocide, and could also be considered a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. There would seem, then, to have been a case for referral of North Korea's recently deceased leader, Kim Jong Il, to the International Criminal Court, and it is still a case for referral of Kim's successors. However, strategic concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons outweigh humanitarian concerns about North Korea's citizens.
North Korea often tries to hide the results of decades of communist authoritarian leadership and economic mismanagement. The military-first policy has caused a lack of economic development and half of the population is living in miserable conditions, suffering an acute humanitarian crisis. The UN has called for urgent aid, but to avoid it from being diverted into the military sector and the elite, it should be channeled directly to the vulnerable population and flow independently of the denuclearisation talks. There is a need of active diplomacy, international cooperation and engagement to enhance the standard of living of the North Korean people.
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Malnutrition rates in North Korea decreased significantly post-famine, with severe wasting dropping to 1% by 2009, matching figures for developing countries in East Asia.
By 2013, non-communicable diseases accounted for 80.2% of deaths in North Korea, reflecting a shift from infectious diseases.
International organizations like UNICEF and WHO established data collection and analysis systems in North Korea, providing crucial insights into nutrition and health statuses post-famine.
North Korea's stunting and malnutrition figures have been consistently better than those of many other low-income countries since the 2000s, indicating relative improvement.
Improved public health outcomes suggest a recovery in administrative capacity, yet persistent challenges indicate underlying governance issues stemming from economic hardship.
Asia Policy, 2008
Comparative Economic Studies, 2008
Foreword by Amartya Sen. Add to Cart. In the mids, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst and Reform of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for selfreliance, Famine in North Korea: Markets was compounded by the regime's failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief. As households, enterprises, local party organs, and military units tried to cope with the economic collapse, a grassroots process of marketization took root. However, rather than embracing these Famine in North Korea: Markets, the North Korean regime opted for tentative economic reforms with ambiguous benefits and a self-destructive foreign policy. As a result, a chronic food shortage continues to plague North Korea today. In their carefully researched and Reform, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland present the most comprehensive and penetrating account of the famine to date, examining not only the origins and aftermath of the crisis but also the regime's response to outside aid and the effect of its current policies on the country's economic future. Their study begins by considering the root causes of Famine in North Korea: Markets famine, weighing the effects of the decline in the availability of food against its poor distribution.
2005
The photographs in this report are used with the permission of DailyNK, a leading online news outlet for information about North Korea established by the South Korean NGO Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKNet). DailyNK is working with Japanese NGOs such as Rescue the North Korean People (RENK) to obtain visual images of life inside North Korea, and share them with the international community. The Committee is grateful to DailyNK and RENK for their contributions to this project.
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2001
In this paper we start from incomplete data ridden with gross measurement errors to construct the underlying data base for a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) of the North Korean economy using cross-entropy estimation techniques. This model incorporates fragmentary information in a rigorous way and allows us to examine the implications of a number of alternative scenarios. First, we model a production-oriented recovery program as the restoration of flood-affected lands. We then model an external assistance program as the acquisition of all food aid necessary to attain the United Nations organizations' estimates of minimum human needs. The trade-oriented recovery program is modeled as a relaxation of agricultural import quotas and the importation of food on commercial terms. Finally, we model a systemic reform program as the elimination of quantitative restrictions on all external trade. We find that only the trade-and reform-centered strategies are likely to provide a sustainable solution to North Korea's problems. Because of North Korea's lack of comparative advantage in the production of grains, the production-oriented strategy fails to attain the country's minimum human needs target. The target could be obtained through international assistance, but it appears that this assistance has been motivated by donors' non-famine-related foreign policy goals and may not be sustainable. Higher levels of assistance depress agricultural prices (and domestic production), rural wages, and the wages of the low skill urban workers, contributing to income inequality. In contrast, not only minimum human needs, but also normal human demands are met under the trade-oriented strategy. However, total normal demand is met only through systemic reform. Under both of the trade-and reform-oriented strategies, GDP rises and wages for all labor groups increase, offering the possibility of a recovery strategy where everyone gains. 1 We would like to thank seminar participants at the International Food Policy Research Institute and US Forces Korea for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Mina Kim provided useful research assistance.
2008
Key patrons-China and South Korea-are finding it politically difficult to provide assistance. Support for aid has been further eroded by evidence of diversion of food aid to the military and the market.
Some observers hope foreign humanitarian aid might undermine the DPRK’s legitimizing ideology. However, a detailed analysis of two official DPRK media outlets shows that the authorities have put in place a sophisticated strategy of damage control through their propaganda apparatus in order to justify the distribution of assistance by supposedly hostile countries. This official discourse describes food problems as a capitalist plot and Western aid as a neocolonialist tool serving a variety of sinister purposes. These efforts became more conspicuous as the information blockade began to disintegrate. As a result of this surprisingly elaborate response, the majority of North Koreans are primed and given a lens through which to interpret contact with foreign aid workers and the receipt of international aid, thereby partially negating its capacity to undermine the official doctrine. Therefore, aid should be distributed on purely humanitarian grounds, with no misguided hopes of automatically winning hearts and minds.
Sanctions and North Korea: The Absence of a Humanitarian Emergency and the Crisis of Development Hazel Smith, 2016
NK News, 2014
We have seen that even though a number of problems persist, North Korea has slowly modified its stance towards foreign aid and humanitarian cooperation. The DPRK seems to have accepted the notion that foreign intervention in the country is needed and has set up a few state-supervised NGOs to coordinate help and initiatives that address the needs of more vulnerable elements of society, particularly the disabled, the elderly and young children. This trend has been much more notable since Kim Jong Un took power, and some analysts in South Korea have speculated that it may serve as a shield against the numerous accusations of human rights violations that North Korea has faced. Other experts however, argue that the DPRK’s commitment to improve living standards across the country is more substantial than one may think. In this second part we delve deeper into the characteristics of North Korea’s system of social welfare and healthcare.
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1998
Smith Hazel