{"id":55253,"date":"2023-05-30T17:00:48","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=55253"},"modified":"2023-05-30T14:01:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T05:01:58","slug":"the-annual-barley-hump-set-hit-some-parts-north-korea-particularly-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/the-annual-barley-hump-set-hit-some-parts-north-korea-particularly-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"The annual “barley hump” set to hit some parts of North Korea particularly hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

As North Korea nears the \u201cbarley hump\u201d \u2014 the lean time in the spring before the barley harvest \u2014 residents of Hwapyong County, Chagang Province, are facing severe privation, Daily NK has learned. Even children feel compelled to forage for food in the woods instead of going to school.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe barley hump is the time of year when the food supply runs the lowest, but people are having an even harder time this year than in the past. Large numbers of families are going hungry, unable to afford even one meal a day,\u201d a reporting partner in Chagang Province told Daily NK last Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Hwapyong County, a lot of children have been going off to gather wild vegetables and supplement the family\u2019s food supply instead of going to school. Most of the children go foraging in groups, and their clothing is so shabby that they look like packs of street urchins, even though they have homes and families,\u201d the reporting partner said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The children go around barefoot or in shoes that are too big for their feet, tattered old clothing on their backs and black smudges on their faces, so it is no wonder that they are often mistaken for urchins, the reporting partner explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWorking parents barely have time to rinse off their children\u2019s stained clothing, and they can\u2019t afford to buy new shoes when the old shoes start to wear out. Since nearly all the families in each neighborhood watch unit [inminban<\/em>] are in the same predicament, the children troop around together without mistreating each other,\u201d the reporting partner said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Children head to the woods in groups to forage for food<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aware that their parents\u2019 earnings aren\u2019t enough to support the family, these children head to the woods together to forage for wild vegetables almost every day instead of going to school. These families are subsisting on vegetable porridge, which they prepare by adding the vegetables foraged by the children with their meager grain supplies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reporting partner related the following sad story shared by a resident of Hwapyong County.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter headed to school, or so she said, in shoes that show her toes. She didn\u2019t say a word about her worn-out shoes, although she typically throws a fit about them, which was even more distressing for me. But when I got home from the marketplace that evening, my daughter had brought back wild vegetables from the woods, which meant she hadn\u2019t gone to school at all. When I told her she needed to go to school tomorrow, she pointed out that we might starve to death if she doesn\u2019t gather wild vegetables. I choked up and couldn\u2019t say a word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That tallied with the following tale, related by another resident of Hwapyong County.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSince the pandemic began, we haven\u2019t been able to buy our son new shoes, which go for well over KPW 100,000, so we bought used shoes instead. But our son\u2019s feet are growing quickly, and his used shoes wear out so fast. Nowadays, he goes out in his father\u2019s big shoes or sometimes in his socks. Not being able to afford decent shoes is bad enough, but we have the added pain of watching him go foraging in the woods to help put food on the table. I just wish there was something else we could do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Daily attendance at schools in Hwapyong County has fallen to between five and ten students per class, the reporting partner said. Homeroom teachers have been dropping by students\u2019 houses in an attempt to boost the attendance rate, but conditions are so bad for everyone that the teachers sometimes cannot bring themselves to order the students back to class, the reporting partner said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine how bad things have gotten when students are skipping school to go forage in the woods without even being told to. People are saying that if the government can\u2019t feed the hungry itself, it should open up [the border] so that people can smuggle in enough to support themselves,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by David Carruth. Edited by Robert Lauler.\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea and China. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read in Korean<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As North Korea nears the \u201cbarley hump\u201d \u2014 the lean time in the spring before the barley harvest \u2014 residents of Hwapyong County, Chagang Province, are facing severe privation, Daily NK has learned. Even children feel compelled to forage for food in the woods instead of going to school. \u201cThe barley hump is the time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":37257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,869],"tags":[123,709,710,1656],"class_list":["post-55253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-agriculture","tag-farming","tag-poverty","tag-food-shortages","tag-dprk"],"yoast_head":"\nThe annual "barley hump" set to hit some parts of North Korea particularly hard - North Korea News \u2014 Daily NK | Latest DPRK Updates 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/the-annual-barley-hump-set-hit-some-parts-north-korea-particularly-hard\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The annual "barley hump" set to hit some parts of North Korea particularly hard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As North Korea nears the \u201cbarley hump\u201d \u2014 the lean time in the spring before the barley harvest \u2014 residents of Hwapyong County, Chagang Province, are facing severe privation, Daily NK has learned. 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