Misplaced Pages

Part of a series on the
History of North Korea
Division of Korea 1945–1948  People's Republic of  Korea 1945–1946  Soviet Civil  Administration 1945–1948  Provisional People's  Committee of North  Korea 1946–1948 Kim Il Sung 1948–1994  Korean War 1950–1953  Korean DMZ Conflict 1966–1969  Juche 1972  1993-1994 nuclear  crisis 1993–1994  Death and state  funeral of  Kim Il Sung 1994 Kim Jong Il 1994–2011  North Korean famine 1994–1998  Songun 1998  Sunshine Policy 1998–2010  Six-party talks 2003  ROKS Cheonan sinking 2010  Death and state  funeral of  Kim Jong Il 2011 Kim Jong Un 2011–present  State Affairs  Commission 2016  2017-2018 North  Korean crisis 2017–2018  Korean peace process 2018–2019  COVID-19 pandemic 2019–2023
North Korea portal
v t e

The North Korean famine (Korean: 조선기근), also known as the Arduous March (고난의 행군), was a period of mass starvation together with a general economic crisis from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea. During this time there was an increase in defection from North Korea which peaked towards the end of the famine period.

The famine stemmed from a variety of factors. Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster. North Korea attempted to obtain aid and commercial opportunities, but failed to receive initial attention.

Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Out of a total population of approximately 22 million, somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses, with the deaths peaking in 1997. A 2011 U.S. Census Bureau report estimated the number of excess deaths from 1993 to 2000 to be between 500,000 and 600,000.

Arduous March

The term "Arduous March" or "March of Suffering" became the official metaphor for the famine following a state propaganda campaign in 1993. The Rodong Sinmun urged the North Korean citizenry to invoke the memory of a propaganda fable from Kim Il Sung's time as a commander of a small group of anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters. The story, referred to as the Arduous March, is described as "fighting against thousands of enemies in 20 degrees below zero, braving a heavy snowfall and starvation, the red flag fluttering in front of the rank".

As part of this state campaign, uses of words such as 'famine' and 'hunger' were banned because they implied government failure. Citizens who said deaths were due to the famine could be in serious trouble with the authorities. A special group (the Simhwajo) was set up to purge the citizens responsible.

Background

In North Korea, people are required to call the great famine the Arduous March (Korean: 고난의 행군, romanized: ko'nan-ŭi haenggun). It was one of the most important events in the history of North Korea, because it forced the regime and its people to change their lives in fundamental and unanticipated ways.

Only about 20% of North Korea's mountainous terrain is arable land. Much of the land is only frost-free for six months, and only one crop can be grown on it per year. The country has never been self-sufficient in food production, and many experts considered it unrealistic for the country to try to be. Due to North Korea's terrain, farming is mainly concentrated along the flatlands of the four western coastal provinces, where there is a longer growing season, level land, substantial rainfall, and well-irrigated soil conducive to the high cultivation of crops. Along with the western coastal provinces, fertile land also runs through the eastern seaboard provinces. However, interior provinces such as Chagang and Ryanggang are too mountainous, dry, and cold to support farming.

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union embarked on political and economic reform. It began to demand that North Korea repay the Soviet Union for all of the past and current aid which it sent to North Korea – amounts which North Korea could not repay. By 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, ending all aid and trade concessions, such as cheap oil. Without Soviet aid, the flow of imports to the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved to be too inflexible to respond. Energy imports fell by 75%. The economy went into a downward spiral, with imports and exports falling in tandem. Flooded coal mines required electricity to operate pumps, and the shortage of coal worsened the shortage of electricity. Agriculture reliant on electrically powered irrigation systems, artificial fertilizers and pesticides was hit particularly hard by the economic collapse.

Most North Koreans had experienced nutritional deprivation long before the mid-1990s. The country had reached the limits of its productive capacity, and could not respond effectively to exogenous shocks.

North Korea's state trading companies emerged as an alternative means of conducting foreign economic relations. From the mid-1980s, these state trading companies became important conduits of funding for the regime, with a percentage of all revenues going "directly into Kim Jong Il's personal accounts... used to secure and maintain the loyalty of the senior leadership".

The country soon imposed austerity measures, dubbed the "eat two meals a day" campaign. These measures proved inadequate in stemming the economic decline. According to Professor Hazel Smith of Cranfield University:

the methods of the past that had produced short-to medium-term gains might have continued producing further small economic benefits if the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc had remained and continued to supply oil, technology, and expertise.

Without help from these countries, North Korea was unable to respond adequately to the coming famine. For a time, China filled the gap left by the Soviet Union's collapse and propped up North Korea's food supply with significant aid. By 1993, China was supplying North Korea with 77 percent of its fuel imports and 68 percent of its food imports. Thus, North Korea replaced its dependence on the Soviet Union with dependence on China. In 1993, China faced its own grain shortfalls and need for hard currency, and it sharply cut aid to North Korea.

In 1997, So Kwan-hui, the North Korean minister for agriculture, was accused of spying for the United States government and sabotaging North Korean agriculture on purpose, thus leading to the famine. As a result, he was publicly executed by firing squad by the North Korean government.

Causes

Floods and drought

The economic decline and failed policies provided the context for the famine, but the floods of the mid-1990s were the immediate cause. The floods in July and August 1995 were described as being "of biblical proportions" by independent observers. They were estimated to affect as much as 30 percent of the country.

As devastating floods ravaged the country in 1995, arable land, harvests, grain reserves, and social and economic infrastructure were destroyed. The United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs reported that "between 30 July and 18 August 1995, torrential rains caused devastating floods in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). In one area, in Pyongsan county in North Hwanghae province, 877 millimetres or 35 inches of rain were recorded to have fallen in just seven hours, an intensity of precipitation unheard of in this area... water flow in the engorged Amnok River, which runs along the Korea/China border, was estimated at 4.8 billion tons over a 72 hour period. Flooding of this magnitude had not been recorded in at least 70 years".

The major issues created by the floods were not only the destruction of crop lands and harvests, but also the loss of emergency grain reserves, because many of them were stored underground. According to the United Nations, the floods of 1994 and 1995 destroyed around 1.5 million tons of grain reserves, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that 1.2 million tons (or 12%) of grain production was lost in the 1995 flood. There were further major floods in 1996 and a drought in 1997.

North Korea lost an estimated 85% of its power generation capacity due to flood damage to infrastructure such as hydropower plants, coal mines, and supply and transport facilities. UN officials reported that the power shortage from 1995 to 1997 was not due to a shortage of oil, because only two out of a total of two dozen power stations were dependent on heavy fuel oil for power generation, and these were supplied by KEDO (the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization). About 70% of power generated in the DPRK came from hydropower sources, and the serious winter-spring droughts of 1996 and 1997 (and a breakdown on one of the Yalu River's large hydro turbines) created major shortages throughout the country at that time, severely cutting back railway transportation (which was almost entirely dependent on electric power), which in turn resulted in coal supply shortages to the coal-fueled power stations which supplied the remaining 20% of power in the country.

Failure of the public distribution system

North Korea's vulnerability to the floods and famine was exacerbated by the failure of the public distribution system. The regime refused to pursue policies that would have allowed food imports and distribution without discrimination to all regions of the country. During the famine, the urban working class of the cities and towns of the eastern provinces of the country was hit particularly hard. The distribution of food reflected basic principles of stratification of the communist system.

Food was distributed to people according to their political standing and their degree of loyalty to the state.

The structure is as follows (the World Food Program considers 600 grams of cereal per day to be less than a "survival ration"):

However, the extended period of food shortages put a strain on the system, and it spread the amount of available food allocations thinly across the groups, affecting 62% of the population who were entirely reliant on public distribution. The system was feeding only 6% of the population by 1997.

A 2008 study, however, found no variation in children's nutrition between counties that had experienced flooding and those that had not.

Long-term causes

The famine was also a result of the culmination of a long series of government decisions that accrued slowly over decades. The attempt to follow a closed-economic model caused the regime to abandon the possibility of engaging in international markets and importing food and instead restrict demand such as carrying out a "Let's eat two meals a day" campaign in 1991. Attempts to increase exports and earn foreign exchange through the Rajin Sonbong free trade zone in 1991 were unsuccessful – it was located in the most isolated part of North Korea and lacked a clear legal foundation for international business. The North Korean government also missed the opportunity for the short-term option to borrow from abroad to finance food imports after defaulting on foreign loans in the 1970s.

Healthcare

Inadequate medical supplies, water and environmental contamination, frequent power failures, and outdated training led to a health care crisis that added to the overall devastation. According to a 1997 UNICEF delegation, hospitals were clean but wards were devoid of even the most rudimentary supplies and equipment; sphygmomanometers, thermometers, scales, kidney dishes, spatulas, IV giving sets, etc. The mission saw numerous patients being treated with homemade beer bottle IV sets, which were clearly not sterile. There was an absence of ORS (oral rehydration solution) and even the most basic drugs such as analgesics and antibiotics.

Widespread malnutrition

With the widespread destruction of harvests and food reserves, the majority of the population became desperate for food, including areas well established in food production. In 1996, it was reported that people in "the so-called better-off parts of the country, were so hungry that they ate the maize cobs before the crop was fully developed". This reduced expected production of an already ravaged harvest by 50%.

People everywhere were affected by the crisis, regardless of gender, affiliation or social class. Child malnutrition, indicated as being severely underweight, was found at 3% in 1987, 14% in 1997 and 7% in 2002.

Military

Songun is North Korea's "Military First" policy, which prioritizes the Korean People's Army in affairs of state and allocates national resources to the "army first". Even though the armed forces were given priority for the distribution of food, this did not mean that they all received generous rations.

The army was supposed to find ways to grow food to feed itself and to develop industries that would permit it to purchase food and supplies from abroad. The rations received by military personnel were very basic, and "ordinary soldiers of the million-strong army often remained hungry, as did their families, who did not receive preferential treatment simply because a son or daughter was serving in the armed forces".

Women

Women suffered significantly due to the gendered structure of North Korean society, which deemed women responsible for obtaining food, water and fuel for their families, which often included extended families. Simultaneously, women had the highest participation rate in the workforce of any country in the world, calculated at 89%. Therefore, women had to remain in the workforce and obtain supplies for their families.

Pregnant and nursing women faced severe difficulties in staying healthy; maternal mortality rates increased to approximately 41 per 1000, while simple complications such as anemia, hemorrhage and premature birth became common due to vitamin deficiency. It was estimated that the number of births declined by about 0.3 children per woman during that period.

Children

Children, especially those under two years old, were most affected by both the famine and the poverty of the period. The World Health Organization reported death rates for children at 93 out of every 1000, while those of infants were cited at 23 out of every 1000. Undernourished mothers found it difficult to breast-feed. No suitable alternative to the practice was available. Infant formula was not produced locally, and only a small amount of it was imported.

The famine resulted in a population of homeless, migrant children known as Kotjebi.

Estimated number of deaths

The exact number of deaths during the acute phase of the crisis, from 1994 to 1998, is uncertain. According to the researcher Andrei Lankov, both the extreme high and low ends of the estimates are considered inaccurate. In 2001 and 2007, independent groups of researchers have estimated that between 600,000 and 1 million people, or 3 to 5 percent of the pre-crisis population, died due to starvation and hunger-related illness. In 1998, US Congressional staffers who visited the country reported that: "Therefore, we gave a range of estimates, from 300,000 to 800,000 dying per year, peaking in 1997. That would put the total number of deaths from the North Korean food shortage at between 900,000 and 2.4 million between 1995 and 1998". W. Courtland Robinson's team found 245,000 "excess" deaths (an elevated mortality rate as a result of premature death), 12 percent of the population in one affected region. Taking those results as the upper limit and extrapolating across the entire North Korean population across the country's provinces produces an upper limit of 2,000,000 famine-related deaths. Andrew Natsios and others estimated 2–3 million deaths.

According to research by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011, the likely range of excess deaths between 1993 and 2000 was between 500,000 and 600,000, and a total of 600,000 to 1,000,000 excess deaths from the year 1993 to the year 2008.

Black markets

At the same time, the years of famine were also marked by a dramatic revival of illegal, private market activities. Smuggling across the border boomed, and up to 250,000 North Koreans moved to China. Amartya Sen had mentioned bad governance as one of the structural and economic problems which contributed to the famine, but it seems that the famine also led to widespread government corruption, which nearly resulted in the collapse of old government controls and regulations.

When fuel became scarce while demand for logistics rose, so-called servi-cha (Korean: 써비차; MR: ssŏbich'a, "service cars") operations formed, wherein an entrepreneur provides transportation to businesses, institutions and individuals without access to other means of transportation, while the car is formally owned by a legitimate enterprise or unit that also provides transportation permits.

With the desperation derived from famine and informal trade and commercialization, North Koreans developed their black market, and moreover, they were surviving by adapting. Andrei Lankov has described the process as the "natural death of North Korean Stalinism".

The average official salary in 2011 was equivalent to US$2 per month. However, the actual monthly income could be estimated to be around US$15 as most North Koreans were earning money from illegal small businesses; trade, subsistence farming, and handicrafts. The illegal economy is largely dominated by women. This is because men are expected to attend their places of official work despite most of the factories being non-functional.

International response

Initial assistance to North Korea started as early as 1990, with small-scale support from religious groups in South Korea and assistance from UNICEF. In August 1995, North Korea made an official request for humanitarian aid and the international community responded accordingly:

Beginning in 1996, the U.S. also started shipping food aid to North Korea through the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to combat the famine. Shipments peaked in 1999 at nearly 600,000 tons making the U.S. the largest foreign aid donor to the country at the time. Under the Bush administration, aid was drastically reduced year after year from 320,000 tons in 2001 to 28,000 tons in 2005. The Bush administration was criticized for "using food as a weapon" during talks over the North's nuclear weapons program, but insisted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) criteria were the same for all countries and the situation in North Korea had "improved significantly since its collapse in the mid-1990s".

South Korea (before the Lee Myung-bak government) and China remained the largest donors of food aid to North Korea. The U.S. objects to this manner of donating food due to the North Korean state's refusal to allow donor representatives to supervise the distribution of their aid inside North Korea. Such supervision would ensure that aid does not get seized and sold by well-connected elites or diverted to feed North Korea's large military. In 2005, South Korea and China together provided almost 1 million tons of food aid, each contributing half.

Humanitarian aid from North Korea's neighbors has been cut off at times in order to provoke North Korea into resuming boycotted talks. For example, South Korea decided to "postpone consideration" of 500,000 tons of rice for the North in 2006, but the idea of providing food as a clear incentive (as opposed to resuming "general humanitarian aid") has been avoided. There have also been aid disruptions due to widespread theft of railway cars used by mainland China to deliver food relief.

Post-famine developments

North Korea has not yet resumed reliable self-sufficiency in food production and as a result, it periodically relies on external food aid from South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, the European Union and other countries. In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered.

In 2005, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea, and the government was reported to have mobilized millions of city-dwellers in order to help rice farmers. In 2012, the WFP reported that food would be sent to North Korea as soon as possible. The food would first be processed by a local processor and it would then be delivered directly to North Korean citizens.

Agricultural production increased from about 2.7 million metric tons in 1997 to 4.2 million metric tons in 2004. In 2008, food shortages continued to be a problem in North Korea, although less so than in the mid to late 1990s. Flooding in 2007 and reductions in food aid exacerbated the problem.

In 2011, during a visit to North Korea, former US President Jimmy Carter reported that one third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth because of a lack of food. He also said that the North Korean government had reduced daily food intake from 5,900 to 2,900 kJ (1,400 to 700 kcal) in 2011. Some scholars believed that North Korea was purposefully exaggerating the food shortage, aiming to receive additional food supplies for its planned mass-celebrations of Kim Il Sung's 100th birthday in 2012 by means of foreign aid.

Escaped North Koreans reported in September 2010 that starvation had returned to the nation. North Korean pre-school children are reported to be an average of three to four centimetres (1+1⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) shorter than South Koreans, which some researchers believe can only be explained by conditions of famine and malnutrition. Most people only eat meat on public holidays, namely Kim Jong Il's birthday, the Day of the Shining Star on February 16 and Kim Il Sung's birthday, the Day of the Sun on April 15.

One report by the Tokyo Shimbun in April 2012 claimed that since the death of Kim Jong Il in December 2011, around 20,000 people had starved to death in South Hwanghae Province. Another report by the Japanese Asia Press agency in January 2013 claimed that in North and South Hwanghae provinces more than 10,000 people had died of famine. Other international news agencies have begun circulating stories of cannibalism.

On the other hand, the WFP has reported malnutrition and food shortages, but not famine. In 2016, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported a steady decline in the infant mortality rate since 2008. An academic analysis in 2016 found that the situation had greatly improved since the 1990s and that North Korea's levels of health and nutrition were on par with other developing countries. In 2017, the analyst Andrei Lankov argued that previous predictions of a return to famine were unfounded, and that the days of starvation had long since passed.

A survey in 2017 found that the famine had skewed North Korea's demography, impacting particularly male babies. Women aged 20–24 made up 4% of the population, while men in the same age group made up only 2.5%. Chronic or recurrent malnutrition dropped from 28 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2017.

In June 2019, after a report made by the United Nations stated that North Korea had experienced the worst harvests in over a decade along with severe food shortages that affected 40% of North Korea's population, South Korea enacted a plan to provide US$8 million worth of food aid to North Korea. The South Korean government's aid to North Korea is widely viewed as having a political agenda of improving inter-Korean relations, despite the South's government's insistence on separating the aid from politics.

See also

• Agriculture in North Korea
• Economy of North Korea
• Foreign relations of North Korea
• History of North Korea
• Human rights in North Korea
• Japan–North Korea relations
• Kotjebi
• North Korea–China relations
• North Korea–South Korea relations
• North Korea–Russia relations
• North Korea–United States relations
• Politics of North Korea
• Potato production in North Korea
• Special Period
• Sunshine Policy
• World Food Programme

References

1. Noland, Marcus (2004). "Famine and Reform in North Korea". Asian Economic Papers. 3 (2): 1–40. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.6.8390. doi:10.1162/1535351044193411. S2CID 57565869.
2. "North Korea: A terrible truth". The Economist. 17 April 1997. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
3. Haggard, Stephan; Noland, Marcus (2007). Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Columbia University Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-231-51152-0. The failure of the International Atomic Energy Agency, South Korea, and the United States to resolve the crisis in a timely manner and the tightening of sanctions against the country constituted an important background condition for the famine.
4. ^ "Humanitarian Aid Toward North Korea: A Global Peace-Building Process", East Asian Review, Winter 2001.
5. ^ Staff (January 2013) Quantity Reporting – Food Aid to North Korea Archived 2014-12-24 at the Wayback Machine World Food Program, Retrieved 2 February 2013.
6. ^ Stephan., Haggard (2007). Famine in North Korea: markets, aid, and reform. Noland, Marcus, 1959–. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14000-3. OCLC 166342476.
7. Hancocks, Paula (2023-03-03). "North Korea's food shortage is about to take a deadly turn for the worse, experts say". CNN. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
8. ^ Kang, David C. (2012-01-01). "They Think They're Normal: Enduring Questions and New Research on North Korea—A Review Essay". International Security. 36 (3): 142–171. doi:10.1162/isec_a_00068. ISSN 1531-4804. S2CID 57564589 – via Project MUSE.
9. Haggard, Stephan; Noland, Marcus (2007). Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Columbia University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0-231-51152-0. Most important for our purposes, however, are signs of more aggressive commercial diplomacy and "aid seeking" beginning in 1994. These proposals were initially either rebuffed or their significance ignored.
10. ^ Noland, Marcus, Sherman Robinson and Tao Wang, Famine in North Korea: Causes and Cures Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, Institute for International Economics.
11. ^ Spoorenberg, Thomas; Schwekendiek, Daniel (2012). "Demographic Changes in North Korea: 1993–2008". Population and Development Review. 38 (1): 133–158. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00475.x. hdl:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00475.x.
12. ^ Daniel Goodkind; Loraine West; Peter Johnson (28 March 2011). "A Reassessment of Mortality in North Korea, 1993–2008". U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. p. 3. Retrieved 8 November 2014.
13. Demick, Barbara (2010). Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea. Sydney: Fourth Estate. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-7322-8661-3.
14. "Mapping a Hidden Disaster: Personal Histories of Hunger in North Korea" (PDF). Natural Hazards Center – University of Colorado. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 November 2016. Retrieved 25 June 2018.
15. "Kim Jong Il's North Korea -An Arduous March- / Spot Survey No.7". Institute of Developing Economies. Retrieved 28 May 2024.
16. Oberdorfer, Don; Carlin, Robert (2014). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Basic Books. p. 291. ISBN 978-0-465-03123-8.
17. Stephan., Haggard (2005). Hunger and human rights: the politics of famine in North Korea. Noland, Marcus, 1959–, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. (1st ed.). Washington, DC: U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. ISBN 978-0-9771111-0-7. OCLC 64390356.
18. Oberdorfer, Don; Carlin, Robert (2014). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Basic Books. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-465-03123-8.
19. Demick, Barbara (2010). Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea. Sydney: Fourth Estate. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-7322-8661-3.
20. Oberdorfer, Don; Carlin, Robert (2014). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Basic Books. p. 308. ISBN 978-0-465-03123-8.
21. Frank, Ruediger (2005-01-01). "Economic Reforms in North Korea (1998–2004): Systemic Restrictions, Quantitative Analysis, Ideological Background". Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy. 10 (3): 278–311. doi:10.1080/13547860500163613. ISSN 1354-7860. S2CID 154438679.
22. Oberdorfer, Don (1999). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Warner. ISBN 978-0-7515-2668-4.
23. Smith, Hazel (2005). Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea. US Institute of Peace Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-929223-59-6.
24. Haggard & Noland, Hunger and Human Rights, supra note 70, at 14.
25. Floru, J.P. (2017). The Sun Tyrant: A Nightmare Called North Korea. London, U.K.: Biteback Publishing. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-78590-221-5. OCLC 984074543. When the size of the catastrophe he had caused became apparent, Kim Jong-il had his agricultural minister Seo Gwan Hee executed by firing squad. Seo was accused of being a spy for 'the American imperialists and their South Korean lackeys' and of having sabotaged North Korea's self-reliance in agriculture.
26. Sang-Hun, Choe (March 18, 2010). "N. Korea Is Said to Execute Finance Chief". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2017. North Korea publicly executed Seo Gwan-hee, a party secretary in charge of agriculture, on spying charges in 1997 when a famine decimated the population, according to defectors.
27. Oberdorfer, Don; Carlin, Robert (2014). The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Basic Books. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-465-03123-8.
28. Buzo, Adrian (2002). The Making of Modern Korea. London: Routledge. p. 175. ISBN 978-0-415-23749-9.
29. "UN Consolidated Inter-Agency appeal for Flood-Related Emergency Humanitarian Assistance to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) 1 July 1996 – 31 March 1997 – Democratic People's Republic of Korea | ReliefWeb". reliefweb.int. July 1996. Retrieved Mar 11, 2023.
30. UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, "Consolidated UN Inter Agency-Appeal", 1 July 1996-21 March 1997.
31. UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, "Status of Public Health-Democratic People's Republic of Korea, April 1997"
32. Cumings, Bruce (2005). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 442. ISBN 978-0-393-32702-1.
33. David F. Von Hippel and Peter Hayes, "North Korean Energy Sector: Current Status and Scenarios for 2000 and 2005", in Economic Integration of the Korean Peninsula, ed. Noland, 89.
34. Ian Davies, quoted in Beal, "Waters of Prosperity"
35. Haggard, Stephan. Nolan, Marcus. 2007. Famine in North Korea. New York; Columbia University Press. p.51
36. Haggard, Stephan. Nolan, Marcus. 2007. Famine in North Korea. New York; Columbia University Press. p.53
37. Haggard, Stephan. Nolan, Marcus. 2007. Famine in North Korea. New York; Columbia University Press. p.54
38. Schwekendiek, Daniel (February 2008). "The North Korean standard of living during the famine". Social Science and Medicine. 66 (3): 596–608. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.09.018. PMID 18006130.
39. Unicef, "DPRK Mission Report", 1997.
40. ^ "Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea", Hazel Smith, p. 66, United States Institute of Peace, 2005.
41. FAO/WFP, "Food and Crop Assessment Mission to the DPRK", Rome, December 10, 1997.
42. Schwekendiek, Daniel. "A socioeconomic history of North Korea", Jefferson and London, McFarland Publishers, 2011, p. 60
43. 『UNDP』
44. Lee, Suk (May 2005). The DPRK Famine of 1994–2000: Existence and Impact (PDF). Korea Institute for National Unification. p. 38. ISBN 89-8479-292-6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 June 2023.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
45. John Powell, "Testimony to the Sub-committee on East Asia and the Pacific of the US House of Representatives, 2 May 2002", reproduced as "Special Report, North East Asia Peace and Security Network", May 20, 2002.
46. International FIDES Service no. 4144, "Hell on Earth: The Church Must Wipe the Tears", April 23, 1999, "Fides – e19990423". Archived from the original on 2003-03-17. Retrieved 2011-10-24..
47. Smith, Hazel "WFP DPRK Programmes and Activities: A Gender Perspective. Pyongyang: WFP, December 1999.
48. United Nations Development Program and Agricultural Recovery and Environmental Protection. "Report of the Second Thematic Round Table Conference for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Found in Annex K: Labor Force and Employment. Geneva: UNDP, June 2000.
49. UNICEF, "Situation of Children and Women (1999)
50. Dilawar Ali Khan, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea: Improving the Quality of Vasic Social Services for the Most Vulnerable Children and Women", mimeo, UNICEF Pyongyang, April 2001.
51. Spoorenberg, Thomas (2014). "Fertility levels and trends in North Korea". Population-E. 69 (4): 433–445. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-27.
52. "The World Today with Sally Sara – ABC Radio". World Today – ABC Radio. Retrieved Mar 11, 2023.
53. Demick, Barbara (2010). Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea. Sydney: Fourth Estate. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-7322-8661-3.
54. Lankov, Andrei (2015). The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-19-939003-8.
55. Daniel Goodkind and Loraine West, "The North Korean Famine and Its Demographic Impact", Population and Development Review 27, no. 2 (June 2001)
56. Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 72–76
57. "Final Reportto Benjamin A. Gilman (R-NY) Chairman, International Relations Committee U.S. House of Representatives | Mission to North Korea and China | August 11–23, 1998 International Relations Committee | U.S. House of Representatives". www.tomcoyner.com. Archived from the original on Dec 25, 2010. Retrieved Mar 11, 2023.
58. They Think They're Normal p. 155
59. Andrew S. Natsios states, "From 1994 to 1998, 2–3 million people died of starvation and hunger-related illnesses, and the famine has generated a range of social and political effects". Natsios, "The Politics of Famine in North Korea" (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, August 2, 1999.)
60. Reed, H. E.; Keely, C. B. (2001). Forced Migration and Mortality. National Research Council (US) Roundtable on the Demography of Forced Migration. doi:10.17226/10086. hdl:10419/170700. ISBN 978-0-309-07334-9. PMID 25057553.
61. Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland, 2007, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform, New York: Columbia University Press.
62. Im Jeong Jin (28 October 2010). "Servi-Cha: the Lifeblood of the People's Economy". Daily NK. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013. Retrieved 5 December 2010.
63. David Kang, "They Think They're Normal: Enduring Questions and New Research on North Korea", International Security, Vol. 36 No. 3, Winter 2011/12, pp. 141–71
64. Lankov, Andrei (1 January 2006). "The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism" (PDF). Asia Policy, January 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 July 2007. Retrieved 17 August 2007.
65. Andrei Lankov (2011-10-09). "NK is no Stalinist country". The Korea Times. Retrieved 9 October 2011.
66. Solomon, Jay (2005-05-20). "US Has Put Food Aid for North Korea on Hold". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 14, 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2007.
67. ^ "Report on U.S. Humanitarian assistance to North Koreans" (PDF). United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 2006-04-15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 March 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2007.
68. "North Korea: Ending Food Aid Would Deepen Hunger". Human Rights Watch. 2006-10-11. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 2 August 2007.
69. Faiola, Anthony (2006-07-14). "S. Korea Suspends Food Aid to North". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 August 2007.
70. "China halts rail freight to North Korea". Financial Times. 2007-10-18. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
71. Talmadge, Eric (22 March 2019). "North Korea, seeking food aid, links sanctions to shortages". Associated Press. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
72. Woo-Cumings, Meredith (2002). The political ecology of famine: the North Korean catastrophe and its lessons Archived 2013-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
73. Brooke, James (1 June 2005) North Korea, Facing Food Shortages, Mobilizes Millions From the Cities to Help Rice Farmers The New York Times, Retrieved 30 January 2013.
74. Buckley, Sarah (September 23, 2005). "North Korea's problem with food". BBC News.
75. Branigan, Tania (April 17, 2008). "UN fears tragedy over North Korean food shortage". The Guardian.
76. Bristow, Michael Ex-leaders head for North Korea BBC News Asia-Pacific, 25 April 2011, Retrieved 25 April 2011.
77. North Korea flouts ban on luxury goods, South Korea charges, Los Angeles Times, 22 July 2011.
78. "BBC News — Tales of starvation and death in North Korea". BBC. 2010. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
79. "BBC News — Are North Koreans really three inches shorter than South Koreans?". BBC. 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
80. Demick, Barbara (October 8, 2011). "The unpalatable appetites of Kim Jong-il". Retrieved 8 October 2011.
81. "20,000 N.Koreans Die of Starvation". Retrieved 25 June 2018.
82. Williams, Robb (28 January 2013) North Korean cannibalism fears amid claims starving people forced to desperate measures The Independent, Retrieved 30 January 2013.
83. "Korea, Democratic People's Republic (DPRK) | WFP | United Nations World Food Programme – Fighting Hunger Worldwide". WFP.
84. Shim, Elizabeth (1 June 2016). "North Korea mortality rates are declining, UN group says". UPI.
85. Smith, Hazel (Spring 2016). "Nutrition and Health in North Korea: What's New, What's Changed and Why It Matters". North Korean Review: 8.
86. Lankov, Andrei (27 March 2017). "N Korea and the myth of starvation". Aljazeera.
87. Miles, Tom (21 June 2018). "Tackling North Korea's chronically poor sewage 'not rocket science': U.N." Reuters.
88. "Better indicators for children in DPR Korea but challenges persist, new data on the situation of children and women shows". www.unicef.org. Retrieved 25 June 2018.
89. "Why South Korea Is Sending $8 Million In Food Aid To North Korea". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-09-25.

Further reading

• Lankov, Andrei. "Trouble Brewing: The North Korean Famine of 1954–1955 and Soviet Attitudes toward North Korea". Journal of Cold War Studies 22:2 (Spring 2020) pp:3–25. online
• Natsios, Andrew S. (2001). The Great North Korean Famine. Washington: Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 978-1-929223-34-3.
• Vollertsen, Norbert (2004). Inside North Korea: Diary of a Mad Place. San Francisco: Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-893554-87-0.

External links

• Newspaper account (Daily Telegraph) including famine deaths of kindergarten children.
• Korea Forest Service

v t e Kim Jong Il
General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army
Politics	Inter-Korean summits 2000 2007 Nuclear tests 2006 2009 Missile tests 2006 2009 Songun
Elections	1982 1986 1990 1998 2003 2009
Books	On the Art of the Cinema (1973) On the Art of Opera (1974) On Further Improving Party Ideological Work (1981) On the Juche Idea (1982) Our Socialism Centred on the Masses Shall Not Perish (1991)
Family	Hong Il-chon (first wife) Kim Young-sook (wife) Song Hye-rim (partner) Ko Yong-hui (partner) Kim Ok (partner) Kim Sol-song (daughter) Kim Jong-nam (son) Kim Jong-chul (son) Kim Jong Un (son) Kim Yo-jong (daughter) Kim Ju-ae (granddaughter) Kim Man-il (brother) Kim Kyong-hui (sister) Kim Pyong-il (half-brother) Kim Il Sung (father) Kim Jong-suk (mother) Kim Yong-ju (uncle) Kim Hyong-jik (grandfather) Kang Pan-sok (grandmother)
Related	Death and state funeral reactions North Korean cult of personality On-the-spot guidance Residences of North Korean leaders International trips North Korean leaders' trains Changsan Revolutionary Site List of leaders of North Korea International Kim Jong Il Prize Order of Kim Jong Il Kimjongilia Awards and decorations "Song of General Kim Jong Il" Titles Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission Taewonsu Badges Portraits Day of the Shining Star North Korean famine Abduction of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee Pulgasari
← Kim Il Sung Kim Jong Un → Category

• 1994 in North Korea
• 1995 in North Korea
• 1996 in North Korea
• 1997 in North Korea
• 1998 in North Korea
• Agriculture in North Korea
• Famines in Asia
• Kim Il Sung
• Kim Jong Il
• Disasters in North Korea
• 20th-century famines