North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has begun to take action to reverse the dire food shortage that is growing more grave in his country and top leaders are now ready to discuss the “very important and urgent task” of formulating a correct agricultural policy.
It is now believed that people may be dying of hunger, though there is no suggestion yet that there may be a repeat of the widespread famine that North Korea experienced in the past.
Kim Jong Un has ordered improvements to infrastructure and expansion of farmland to ramp up food production. He gave instructions to revamp irrigation systems, build modern farming machines and create more arable land as he wrapped up the seventh enlarged plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s powerful Central Committee on Wednesday.
The meeting began on Sunday to discuss the “urgent” task ahead of them.
South Korea has warned of the mounting food crisis in the isolated North, due in part to what it said was a failure of a new grain policy limiting private crop transactions.
North Korea’s economy has been battered by floods and typhoons, sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs, and a sharp decline in trade with China amid border closures and COVID-19 lockdowns.
South Korea’s rural development agency estimated the North’s crop production fell nearly 4% last year from the year before, citing heavy summer rains and other economic conditions.
Kim laid out plans and specific tasks to build “rich and highly-civilized socialist rural communities with advanced technology and modern civilization,” the official KCNA news agency said.
He ordered revamp of the irrigation system to cope with climate change, production of efficient farming machines to modernize production, and reclamation of tidelands to expand farming areas, KCNA said.
The food shortage crisis has wider repercussions: “Kim Jong Un can’t advance his nuclear program stably if he fails to resolve the food problem fundamentally because public support would be shaken,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.
