NORTH KOREA'S 'WORST DROUGHT' THREATENS FAMINE.....

Forbes Asia 6/18/2015 @ 8:59AM 3,674 views
North Korea's 'Worst Drought' Threatens Famine As Kim Jong-Un Watches Over More Missile Tests

By: Donald Kirk

North Korea is on the cusp of the worst drought since the 1990′s when as many as 2 million people died of starvation and disease.
We get that word from Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency in between reports of “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un ordering — and witnessing — missile tests, while his propaganda machine heaps invective along with the usual threats against South Korea and the U.S.
KCNA’s plaintive description of rice paddies drying up in the rice bowl region around and south of Pyongyang, of nearly one third of rice paddies “parched,” raises some obvious questions. Is North Korea claiming the worst drought in a century in a bid for heaps of aid? Are conditions all that bad — or is KCNA engaging in hyperbole?
And if the drought is so terrible, if North Koreans are in danger of mass starvation on the same scale as that in the 1990′s, might Pyongyang somehow be amenable to negotiations on its nuclear and missile programs?

Considering that North Korea’s right to be a nuclear power is enshrined in its constitution, we may assume the North is not about to abandon its nukes. The best hope, if there is any, would be to cool it, to foreswear more testing, to cut back on massive investment in nukes, missiles and other armaments that should be dedicated to feeding the people.
But really how badly is North Korea suffering during the current dry spell? While there’s no way to verify the severity of conditions up there, two reliable aid-givers are coming to the rescue.
One is the World Food Program, which has an ongoing program for feeding the most vulnerable 2.4 million people, about 10 percent of North Korea’s population.
How much WFP aid goes to women and children and how much is diverted to North Korea’s 1.1-million troops as well as party and government cadres is not at all clear, but 70% of the people are reportedly going hungry. Nearly 2 million people are malnourished, according to the WFP.  Typically growth is stunted while millions are in danger of diseases for which there are no medical facilities.
Quite aside from the World Food Program, the other crucial benefactor is China, which already showers North Korea with virtually all its oil and half its food supplies.
Now China is considering sending extra emergency aid whenever it receives a formal request from North Korea, according to a Chinese spokesman. Whether North Korea will go begging to Beijing for more handouts is not clear, however, since Chinese aid comes with strings attached, onerous, humiliating conditions that North Korea hates.
Beijing may not be able to “order” North Korea to do its bidding but can make clear handouts are contingent on going easy on the nuclear and missile programs and, yes, returning to talks. Hosted by China, the last six-party talks were held in Beijing in December 2008, nearly seven years ago.
North Korea’s prickly relationship with China, its only real ally, parallels its isolation from the rest of the world.
While economic sanctions imposed after nuclear and missile tests remain in place, aid has dropped precipitously.  UN agencies last year provided about $50 million, one sixth the $300 million pumped into the country ten years earlier.

Rice grows from the cracked and dry earth in North Korea. (AP Photo/Kim Kwang Hyon)
South Korea, after shipping half a million tons of food and fertilizer into North Korea annually during the decade of the Sunshine policy under two liberal presidents, stopped giving significant amounts of aid in 2008.
North Korea has loudly spurned offers of huge aid programs as proposed by the conservatives who then took over — including the incumbent President Park Geun-hye. The North’s rejections of these offers was accompanied by insulting rhetoric in which Ms. Park was described as a “whore” and her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, as a “rat” for making them contingent on the North’s showing signs of willingness to give up its nuclear and missile programs.
South Korea does not appear likely to extend more than small amounts of aid while also suffering from drought. The South’s finance minister, Choi Kyung-hwan, has promised aid to farmers hit by the drought amid fears that consumer prices will rise sharply. Sales in the South are falling for an entirely different reason — concerns about MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that has already claimed more than 20 lives.

Female North Korean soldiers bring water to a corn fields. Both Koreas are suffering from the worst dry spell since record keeping began more than a century ago, according to officials in Seoul and Pyongyang. (AP Photo/Kim Kwang Hyon)
North Korea is avoiding any hint of concerns about its nukes and missiles while projecting the image of a country suffering a 15-year low in rainfall. The portrayal of extreme drought coincides with the run-up to the annual harvest in July. The idea appears to be to persuade the World Food Program and others to increase their shipments as the country’s real needs become more clear in the next few weeks.
WFP director David Kaatrud, in an interview with South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, was cautious about what the WFP would be doing.
“The concern is going to grow week by week,” he told Yonhap. The WFP’s “role is not only to be vigilant” but also to “stand ready should  assistance be required to change our operation toward relief related to any type of food security.”
Whatever WFP does, said Kaatrud, “would be very similar to what you see now — a targeted nutrition intervention because that’s what’s required there.”


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