Famine in North Korea 1994–1998

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The famine in North Korea 1994–1998 is referred to in North Korea as the Arduous Road or the Path of Suffering and describes a period of massive food shortages and hunger in the country. Politically, the famine coincides with the end of the rule of state founder Kim Il-sung and the first years of Kim Jong-il's rule . The reasons are crop failures as well as the suspension of aid payments from abroad after the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the widespread mismanagement of the regime. Reliable figures on the number of deaths from the famine are not available and the memory of it is suppressed in the country to this day. Projections based on the stories of North Korean refugees originally assumed 2 to 3 million deaths out of a population of just over 22 million. This would make it one of the worst famines of the 20th century. However, since most of the refugees come from the particularly affected north of the country, these estimates could be too high. The lowest estimates assume 200,000 deaths. A detailed data analysis by the United States Census Bureau of the 1993 and 2008 censuses in North Korea assumed an increased mortality rate in the famine period of 500,000 to 600,000 in 2011.

background

Only about 20% of North Korea's mountainous terrain is arable land . Much of the land is frost-free for only six months and only allows one harvest per year. The country has never been self-sufficient when it comes to food, and many experts consider it unrealistic to achieve this. Before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the country was largely dependent on food aid and economic aid from abroad. The most important partners were the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China . Most North Koreans had experienced food shortages long before the mid-1990s, as the centrally planned economic system could not guarantee food supplies beforehand and was unable to cope with unforeseen events.

procedure

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union began political and economic reforms. They asked North Korea to repay past and current aid - amounts that North Korea could not repay. The Soviet Union dissolved by 1991 and ended all aid and trade concessions such as B. cheap oil. Without Soviet help, the flow of imports into the North Korean agricultural sector ended, and the government proved too inflexible to respond. The country's economy collapsed and the state's supply system collapsed. Economic decline and failed policies set the context for the famine, but the floods of the mid-1990s were believed to be the immediate cause. The devastating floods in 1995 devastated the country, arable land, crops, grain reserves and social and economic infrastructure were destroyed. In 1996 there were other major floods and in 1997 a drought . Due to the lack of energy and electricity, food could no longer be transported over long distances. With the widespread destruction of crops and food reserves, the majority of the population was desperate for food, even in areas where food production was well established. In 1996 it was reported that people in "the so-called better-off parts of the country were so hungry that they ate the ears of corn before the harvest was fully developed". This reduced the expected production of an already devastated crop by 50%. The government rationed food and launched a campaign called "Eat Two Meals a Day". The state media have compared the people's struggle against hunger to the revolutionary struggle of Kim Il-sung. North Korea formally applied for humanitarian aid in August 1995 and the international community responded accordingly. The country then received food aid from South Korea , China , the United States , Pakistan , Japan and the European Union . The North Korean regime, however, continued to show a great lack of transparency with regard to the crisis to the world public and tried to blackmail political concessions.

In 1997, North Korean Agriculture Minister So Kwan-hui was accused of spying for the United States government and deliberately sabotaging North Korean agriculture, resulting in famine. As a result, he was publicly executed by the North Korean government by a firing squad. The state media euphemistically referred to the famine as an arduous road and banned the use of the word famine as it could indicate a government failure. Anyone who mentioned a famine or complained could face serious sanctions.

consequences

The famine caused the immediate death of hundreds of thousands of people. The exact number of deaths in the acute phase of the crisis from 1994 to 1998 is uncertain. According to researcher Andrei Lankow , both the extremely high and low extremes of the estimates are considered inaccurate. In 2001 and 2007, independent research groups estimated that between 600,000 and 1 million people, or 3 to 5 percent of the population, died of starvation and malnutrition before the crisis. Starving farmers and children moved across the country in search of food and are also said to have eaten grass and tree bark. There are reports of dead bodies lying in the streets and incidents of cannibalism . The regime nevertheless refused to pursue a policy that would allow the importation and distribution of food without discrimination in all regions of the country. The food was distributed to the people according to their political position and their loyalty to the state. People everywhere were affected by the crisis, regardless of gender, affiliation or social class. During the famine, however, the population of the country's eastern and northern provinces was particularly hard hit. Since the state distributed all food itself, people and families who were classified as undesirable by the state and were classified by the Songbun system starved to death . Children, especially under the age of two, were hardest hit by the famine and poverty of the period. The World Health Organization reported infant mortality rates as 93 out of 1,000, while those of infants were reported as 23 out of 1,000. The famine resulted in a population of homeless migrant children who wandered the country begging and looking for food, known as Kotjebi . Although the military had a privileged position in North Korea, it was held responsible for its own supplies and so many soldiers went hungry.

Another consequence of the famine is the increasing number of refugees from North Korea who crossed the Yalu river to get to China. The state food supply system collapsed and was replaced by black markets. Andrei Lankow described this process as the "natural death of North Korean Stalinism ".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David C. Kang, They Think They're Normal: Enduring Questions and New Research on North Korea — A Review Essay . In: International Security . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2011, ISSN  1531-4804 , p. 142–171 (English, online [accessed March 18, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Barbara Crossette: Korean Famine Toll: More Than 2 Million. In: The New York Times . August 20, 1999, accessed March 18, 2020 .
  3. ^ A Reassessment of Mortality in North Korea, 1993-2008. US Census Bureau, accessed March 18, 2020 .
  4. ^ Don Oberdorfer, Robert Carlin: The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History . Basic Books, 2014, ISBN 978-0-465-03123-8 , pp. 291 (English).
  5. ↑ Marcus Noland, Sherman Robinson, Tao Wang: Famine in North Korea: Causes and Cures. (PDF) Retrieved March 18, 2020 (English).
  6. ↑ Steve Coll: North Korea's Hunger. In: The New Yorker . Retrieved March 18, 2020 (English).
  7. ^ Adrian Buzo: The Making of Modern Korea . Routledge, London 2002, ISBN 978-0-415-23749-9 , pp. 175 (English).
  8. ↑ Bruce Cumings: Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History . WW Norton & Company , New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-393-32702-1 , pp. 442 (English).
  9. ↑ Hazel Smith: Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, and Social Change in North Korea , p. 66, United States Institute of Peace, 2005 (English).
  10. ^ Don Oberdorfer: The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History . Warner Books 1997 (English)
  11. ↑ Quantity Reporting - Food Aid to North Korea , World Food Program, February 2, 2013 (English)
  12. ↑ Bernd Weiler: North Korea is starving - and threatening with it. In: The world . July 25, 1999, accessed March 18, 2020 .
  13. ↑ JP Floru: A Nightmare Called North Korea . In: The Sun Tyrant . Biteback Publishing, London, UK 2017, ISBN 978-1-78590-221-5 , pp. 21 (English, limited preview in the Google book search): 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.
  14. ↑ Choe Sang-Hun: N. Korea Is Said to Execute Finance Chief. In: The New York Times . March 18, 2010, accessed on July 10, 2017 (English): “ 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. "
  15. ↑ Sandra Fahy: Mapping a hidden disaster. Personal Histories of Hunger in North Korea. In: Natural Hazards Observer. September 2015, archived from the original on November 28, 2016 ; accessed on March 18, 2020 (English).
  16. ↑ Andrei Lankov: The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-939003-8 , pp. 81 (English).
  17. ↑ Daniel Goodkind, Loraine West: The North Korean Famine and Its Demographic Impact In: Population and Development Review 27, No. 2 (June 2001) (English)
  18. ↑ Stephen Haggard, Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 72–76 (English)
  19. ↑ Jürgen Kremb: NORTH KOREA: In the realm of ghosts . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1997 ( online - June 23, 1997 ).
  20. ↑ Stephen Haggard, Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 54 (English)
  21. ^ Barbara Demick : Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea . Fourth Estate, Sydney 2010, ISBN 978-0-7322-8661-3 , pp. 160 (English).