Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit: News from North Korea Cites Food Crisis and Hint for Help

Loading cabbage used for Korean main dish 

(Kimchi)

Humanitarian crisis in North Korea: Pyongyang has warned that it is facing a food shortfall of some 1.4 million tons this year, forcing the regime to almost halve rations. 

NY TIMES sad story: Forty-one percent of North Koreans, about 10.5 million people, are undernourished.

An undated two-page memo from the North Korean mission to the UN  and seen by Reuters blames the shortages of rice, wheat, potatoes and soy beans on soaring temperatures, drought and floods that damaged crops last year.

The release of the document comes just a week before a landmark summit in Vietnam between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump during which the North Korean leader will seek an easing of U.S. led international sanctions that are slowing his country’s economic development. 

The harsh sanctions were imposed to pressure the North Koreans to dismantle their nuclear and ballistic missiles programs and Washington believes that insufficient progress has been made to allow financial penalties to be lifted.

While frequent natural disasters have contributed to long-term food insecurity in the pariah regime, so too have the policies of the Kim dynasty to pursue the creation of nuclear weapons and keep North Korea in perpetual isolation.

The North Korean memo reportedly a follow-up to a joint assessment with the World Food Program (WFP) late last year, but the WFP declined to comment said: “The DPRK [North Korean] government calls on international organizations to urgently respond to addressing the food situation.”

The memo also revealed that the country’s food production last year was 4.951 million tons, 503,000 tons down from 2017. While food imports would make up some of the gap, daily rations would have to be cut from 550 to 300 grams.

On Thursday, a UN spokesperson said that aid officials were consulting the government: “To further understand the impact of the food security situation on the most vulnerable people in order to take early action to address their humanitarian needs.”

Last year the United Nations and aid groups were only able to help one third of six million people in need due to a lack of funding.  Some 10 million people – about 40 per cent of the population – are undernourished and require humanitarian assistance. Despite the desperate need, the WFP has been unable to meet its funding goals.

In a statement to the Telegraph in November, it said that $7.5 million was still needed over the next five months to avoid more cuts to food assistance. It also revealed that a “critical funding shortfall” in 2018 had already meant 190,000 children were deprived of nutritional support.

Historically, North Korea has struggled to feed its population through a combination of economic mismanagement, the withdrawal of Soviet support and a catastrophic famine in the 1990s during which an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million died from starvation or related diseases. 

The country’s authorities have publicly acknowledged the existence of a nutrition problem. Professor Ri, Gi-Song, a leading economist at the Pyongyang Institute of Social Sciences, told the Telegraph in a previous interview said:  “It is our goal to fully solve the food security problem by 2020, which is the final year of our five-year national development plan.”

However, Pyongyang’s recent memo also blamed UN sanctions for restricting the delivery of farming materials and hindering fuel supplies for the agriculture sector.

Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, said earlier this month that the U.S. had eased rules on humanitarian assistance to the reclusive regime, and was working to clear a backlog of UN approvals.  

Trump comments on the forthcoming Hanoi meeting:

Trump told reporters at the White House, though he again tamped down expectations for the summit. Trump said this week that North Korea: “Must do something that's meaningful on denuclearization before he would support lifting economic sanctions, a possible point of contention in next week's summit. I think they want to do something. I don't think this will be the last meeting.”

Kim and Trump met last year in Singapore in the first-ever meeting between a North Korean leader and an American president. At that summit, Kim pledged to eliminate his country's nuclear weapons programs, but some U.S. officials said North Korea has yet to take concrete, verifiable steps to that end. 

The U.S. is looking for firmer commitments at the Vietnam summit. However, North Korea wants the United States and other countries to start reducing economic sanctions before it makes major changes to its nuclear program.

My 2 cents: With that Kim stance vs. Trump’s we about to see who the best negotiator is – the results may surprise us all.

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.