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Koreans have a rice heart!
Hello. I’m Seo Hyo-ju, a 16th-generation reporter for the Unicorn Press, greeting you with a quote today. What did you have for today’s meal? Is rice still your staple food? Despite the saying that Koreans have a rice heart, the consumption of rice in our country has been steadily decreasing for 38 years. As a result, the per capita consumption of rice last year recorded the lowest ever.
▲ Decreasing rice consumption in South Korea for 38 years (1992-2022) (ⒸStatistics Korea)
So what about the situation in North Korea, our close but distant ethnic group? North Korea is a place where the ‘Arduous March’, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths due to severe food shortages, occurred from 1996 to 1999. Since then, it has been experiencing chronic food shortages. As proof of this, North Korea requested rice aid from India last year. Like this, North Korea has a history of receiving rice aid from various countries, not just our country. But why won’t North Korea’s food shortage stop? I want to answer this question with an analysis of North Korea’s rice distribution system!
“Unprecedentedly good crop conditions”
In the vast farmlands of South Hwanghae Province, where a pleasant crop situation that is rare to see in previous years is unfolding,
Farms and work units that had lagged behind are looking at high yields that could not be seen in recent years.
Agricultural workers are blooming with laughter as they harvest the rice grains they have worked hard to grow throughout spring and summer,
and are stacking up the grain heaps (grain piles) high in the fields.
▲ North Korean residents harvesting in a village in Gaepung-gun, Hwanghae-bukdo, North Korea, seen from the Ganghwa Peace Observatory in Ganghwa-gun, Incheon City (ⒸYonhap News)
The above phrases are reports from the Labor Newspaper last month (October 6th, 7th). Surprisingly, North Korea has recently been promoting through the media that the farming is bountiful every day. Even on September 7th last year, Alexander Matsegora, the Russian ambassador to North Korea, expressed his intention to provide food aid to North Korea, but North Korea did not want it, he mentioned in an interview with Russian media.
However, according to the National Intelligence Service in August, there were 245 deaths from starvation in North Korea from January to July this year, and the number has more than doubled compared to the average of the past five years (about 110 per year) it announced the analysis results. In addition, Kwon Tae-jin, the head of the GS&J Institute, a North Korean agricultural expert, estimated this year’s food production at around 4.7 million tons. Although it is a higher production than last year, it is far from enough compared to the 5.4 million tons needed to feed all North Koreans. Therefore, even if the October harvest in North Korea was a bumper year, it is difficult to say that the food shortage that could lead to starvation from January to July has been resolved.
Is North Korea’s endless food shortage simply due to a lack of rice?
The answer is ‘no’!
As I explained earlier and looking at North Korea’s continuous request for rice aid, it can be thought that food shortages and deaths from starvation occur in North Korea simply because there is no rice. However, we need to understand North Korea’s distribution system to see how rice is distributed to North Korean residents and where the problems are in the process to understand the problem of food shortage in North Korea.
North Korea’s ‘Selective’ Distribution System
What is the distribution system in North Korea that causes food shortages? For a long time, North Korea has distributed rice through a ‘selective’ distribution system. Selective distribution is classified into 1~9 grades of distribution systems, and the structure is divided into two major parts.
– National Distribution
It is rice and other food that the state has compulsorily purchased from cooperative farms. The distribution targets are mainly residents of Pyongyang working in the party and state agencies.
– Corporate Distribution (Self-Distribution)
It is rice and other food that enterprises have secured through trade companies, public trade, and internal market transactions within the range permitted by North Korea. Since the enterprise distributes rice to workers on its own, it is also called ‘self-distribution’.
If you divide North Korea’s rice distribution system into upper, middle, and lower levels, it looks like the picture below. First, at the upper level, direct and indirect control of the North Korean authorities takes place, and at the middle level, it is used for the purpose of operating the food stock and distribution system of the authorities.
▲ You can see that the route of rice distribution in North Korea moves from top to bottom. (ⒸSeo Hyo-ju reporter)
Then, as a result, almost all the rice is consumed before reaching the lower level, the market. ‘Some’ rice that has reached the lower level after passing through the upper and middle levels is circulated through the market mechanism by individual North Korean residents through sales and consumption. In other words, the rice that the lower-level North Korean residents eat is mostly distributed by the enterprise, which means self-distribution. Here, you can see why North Korea’s food shortage is not resolved. The main victims of the food shortage, North Korean residents, are distributing rice to many North Koreans through corporate distribution (self-distribution), which is a small amount compared to domestic rice production.
