▲ The seminar held by Network for NKnet on the 4th, 'The Truth of the North Korean Food Crisis and its Solution' ⓒ the Daily NK

It has been suggested that the sharp rise in North Korean food prices earlier in 2008, and therefore the subsequent food crisis, was willfully caused by the North Korean authorities as a side-effect of putting relations with South Korea on ice.

Jiro Ishimaru (石丸次郞), representative of the Osaka Office of Asia Press, asserted it at a seminar held by Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights on the 4th, “The Truth of the North Korean Food Crisis and its Solution.”

Ishimaru stated that “As if the North Korean authorities had already predicted the spring food crisis this year, they released an instruction on food around February 16, warning people not to rely on food distribution by July this year.”

Therefore, this measure was a key cause of the sudden rise in food prices, because it increased the burden on people who were already worrying about food.

He explained that “There is believable evidence that at the time when the instruction was given, provisions in some national food stores were all drained out. On April 15 (the Sun’s Day, the birthday of Kim Il Sung), even in Pyongyang they could not give free candies as presents to children at once, because production of such things was problematic. Practically, I guess this instruction was the starting gun for the panic in the grain markets in North Korea.”

▲ Jiro Ishimaru, representative of the Osaka Office of Asia Press ⓒ the Daily NK

He continued that “There were also external reasons for the skyrocketing grain prices: international grain price rises, and Chinese restrictions on food exports, but they are not the fundamental reasons for a more than two-fold rise in grain prices.”

He pointed to intensive inspections as one other key reason for the rise in grain prices, alongside the February instruction.

He reported that “From March to late April, for almost 40 days, inspections were undertaken nationally. In Hwanghae Province, the inspection groups under the Central Court came down and confiscated food which the cadres in farms had embezzled. In some cases, they confiscated 500-1000kg of rice and grains from cadres’ households by searching with metal sticks in their backyard.”

The Director of the Ministry of Administration of the Chosun (North Korea) Workers’ Party Jang Sung Taek and his inspection group went to Shinuiju and inspected persons in charge of trading.

Additional reasons for the crisis are the abrogation of the No. 112 land system, unstable food distribution, market restraint, failure of a South Korean fertilizer offer, cornering and hoarding, robbery damage in agricultural areas, and rising oil prices.

The No. 112 land system operates whereby the authorities offer a certain width of fallow lands, which are different by grade of food distribution amount, to national public servants and clerical workers, given in order to make them solve their food problem by farming instead of relying on distribution. Ishimaru explained that “However, the new Kim Young Il cabinet abrogated this system and banned them from planting seeds on those fields.”