Defectors who escaped from North Korea in the mid-1990s share terrible memories of ‘The March of Tribulation’, a euphemistic title for North Korea’s period of famine. This extreme food crisis went on for about four years, from 1995 to 1998. Different research institutes have made different findings, but anywhere from 2 to 3 million people are estimated to have died due to disease or starvation caused by food shortages in this period.
Former Chosun Workers’ Party Secretary Hwang Jang Yop testified in his memoirs, “At the turn of 1995, a flood in North Pyongan Province heralded the beginning of severe food shortages. Piles of bodies could be seen all over the place.”
In the early 90s, after many communist countries had already collapsed, North Korea’s economic situation deteriorated rapidly. This was not causative; the economic decline of North Korea had been predicted for some time. After the establishment of the regime which has ruled North Korea since its foundations, the leadership consistently pursued a route of self-reliance, which meant shunning foreign economic exchanges. North Korea’s obsession with a closed, socialist-style planned economy was the main cause of its economic decline.
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In the 1980s Kim Jong Il promoted the modernization and idolization of Pyongyang to strengthen the grip of his one-man reign. In 1989, this led to him splurge state funds on hosting the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, for the purpose of competing with the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. The vast amount of money spent on this albatross made it seemingly impossible from that point on for the North Korean economy to ever recover.
At the same time, natural disasters such as droughts and floods led the country’s system of state-led production to collapse, taking out the distribution system along with it.
The collapse of the distribution system forced the North Korean people out into mountains and fields in search of food. Desperation and the difficulty of obtaining real food drove many to eat tree bark or roots. This was the start of the explosion of ‘kotjebi’, a new class of child beggars.
According to United Nations data, by 1998 the level of malnourishment in North Korea had reached 60%, and chronic food shortages have continued ever since. It has now come to the point where without the help of the international community North Korea cannot overcome these food shortages. The fact that more than a generation is now afflicted with defects caused by 20 years of food shortages and malnourishment will remain as one of the indelible crimes of the Kim Jong Il regime.
Yet even in these difficult times, Kim Jong Il famously enjoyed living high off the hog. In the period after he took power, he would spend several thousand dollars on a single meal, which often included eel caviar, roast piglet, shark’s fin and expensive goat meat.
Kim didn’t spend all the money on himself, but his investments were made mainly in looking after his close associates and idolizing Kim Il Sung; he never lifted a finger to do anything to better the lives of the starving North Korean people.
Kim spent 20 million dollars a year on gifts for his close associates, making sure that their loyalty was sound at all times. What is more, Kim built over ten private vacation homes throughout scenic areas of North Korea and enjoyed spending each of his seasonal vacations at a different one. One of his vacation homes reportedly has an underwater floor made of 10 centimeter thick reinforced glass to see 100 meters beneath the sea.
Kim spent $890 million lavishly expanding the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, which is where Kim Il Sung’s body is entombed and where his own lies in state. This money would have bought six million tons of corn at international grain prices, food which could have been used to minimize the famine situation.
Tellingly, Hwang Jang Yop said that he made the decision to break away from Kim Jong Il after seeing him sink such huge capital and resources into the Kumsusan Memorial Palace for no other reason than to idolize Kim Il Sung. As Hwang said, “I felt a surge of anger when I saw that Kim Jong Il was focused only on idolizing Kim Il Sung and himself, without taking any action to end the food crisis.”
