Sunday, June 8, 1997
COLUMN ONE
In N. Korea, Resilience in the Face of Famine
Amid sensational reports of cannibalism and thousands of deaths, a rarevisit to
this isolated nation provides a different portrait--of a resourceful peoplestaving
off disaster.
By TERESA WATANABE, HYUNGWON KANG, Times Staff Writers
UNPA COUNTY, North Korea--Devastated by disastrous flooding thatswept her home
away two years ago, Yang Soo Bok now struggles with a more pernicious hardship:a
perilous nationwide food shortage that has reduced government rations toless than a
fourth of a bowl of cornmeal a day.
Yet blooming in the private garden of hernewly built home is a cornucopia of 12 crops,
including lettuce, pumpkin, corn and wheat. She has two fruit trees andalso is raising a pig and
three chickens.
Yang's private food supply, which feeds herhousehold of three, is part of a spreading
wave of efforts across North Korea to stave off threats of mass starvationamid dwindling aid
from the isolated Communist regime.
As slow famine grips this land, giving riseto sensational and unconfirmed reports of
cannibalism, child-selling and hundreds of thousands of deaths in outlyingareas, a rare visit to
North Korea provided a different national portrait--of self-control andstoic struggle, of a
single-minded focus on creative ways to survive a looming disaster.
Residents here told The Times that they arecoping with the food crisis by supplementing
rations with alternatives, many self-gathered, including mountain rootsadded to rice, corncobs
ground to powder for cakes, and seaweed stir-fried or made into noodles.They are dipping into
private reserves of rations hoarded over the past several months and sellingoff household goods
to buy food in the swelling number of private markets that officials beganto tolerate last year.
The private efforts are not confined to Yangand her neighbors in Unpa County, one of
the nation's breadbaskets. In the capital, Pyongyang, where workers in sunglassesand neat suits
scurry to work on buses, the terraces of concrete apartment buildings havebeen transformed
into food production centers with miniature vegetable plots and rabbit-breedinggrounds.
"Eating namul [edible wild plants] isnothing new. . . . It's just that we're eating more of it
these days," said Li Sung Suk, 50, a Pyongyang cleric. "It's noteasy. But our people are firmly
united to overcome this national difficulty."
No one knows precisely whether it is theseprivate efforts that are keeping mass starvation
at bay. North Korean officials acknowledge scattered cases of starvationdeaths among the
elderly along with spreading malnutrition among children--some of whom werewoefully thin
and had discolored brown hair and white patches on their faces.
In Unpa, where people have sustained themselveswith chewy mountain arrowroot and
sour but edible plants not normally eaten, as many as 30 children are hospitalizedevery 10 days
for malnutrition, said Cho Hyun Sook, chairwoman of the county's economicadministration
unit.
The International Committee of the Red Crossrecently estimated that malnutrition afflicts
just 16% of North Koreans, compared with 30% in India.
Aid Agencies Marvel at Widespread Fortitude
Even aid agencies have marveled that the NorthKorean fortitude--perhaps at least partly a
result of the government's longtime doctrine of juche, or self-reliance--hashelped stave off what
might, by now, have developed into a full-blown catastrophe among a lessresilient people.
"In most countries, if they were confrontedwith as serious a food shortage as North
Korea is facing at this moment, I think we would have seen megadeaths already,"said Tun Myat,
a frequent visitor to North Korea as a representative of the U.N. WorldFood Program based in
Rome. "But people there have very developed coping mechanisms."
Given such demonstrated survival skills, sharpdifferences of opinion are emerging over
how well the North Koreans can sustain themselves until the autumn riceharvest.
In a special alert issued last week, the WorldFood Program announced that food stocks
were depleted in half the nation's 10 public distribution centers, whichserve three-fourths of the
civilian population, with the rest due to be gone by June 20. About 1.3million tons of food aid
must be supplied "if a large-scale human catastrophe is to be avoided,"the organization
announced.
But the South Korean government, based onits own monitoring of its neighbor, has
calculated that North Korea can make do until the autumn rice harvest byrelying on summer
crops, such as potatoes and corn, and new harvests of barley. One reasonfor the discrepancy is
that the South Koreans calculate a person's daily grain requirement at 150grams, figuring the
northerners can squeak through on such low levels for a few more months.The World Food
Program, however, pegs its level at 450 grams, still just 75% of what itsays are internationally
recognized as minimum caloric requirements.
"The crisis is over in North Korea,"declared Ryoo Chong Ryul of the National
Unification Ministry in Seoul.
Experts See Systemic Problems Persisting
In any case, most experts agree that no matterhow much emergency food aid is poured
into North Korea, long-term, systemic problems are certain to continue bedevilingthis land.
In recent years, the government has begunreforms to improve worker incentives and crop
yields, such as allowing farmers to keep 30% of their harvests. But thesimple fact of North
Korea's geography--limited arable land and a harsh climate--makes it virtuallyimpossible for it
to attain self-sufficiency in feeding itself, said John Dyck, a U.S. AgricultureDepartment
specialist on the country.
"Not even U.S. agriculture in North Korea,with all of its technology, could make it
self-sufficient," Dyck said, adding that a growing population and lowercrop yields caused by
exhausted soils had created North Korea's dependency on imports by the mid-1980s.
"They are going to be in this situationevery year, and I don't know how long aid can be
counted on to meet the gap," Dyck added. "The main problems arethe rest of the economy and
the trading system. North Korea has to be able to buy the food it needs."
For now, that seems difficult, because virtuallyno one is willing to extend significant
credit to a nation plagued with a poor record of honoring commercial commitments.A
$4-million barter deal involving 20,000 tons of wheat from U.S. grain giantCargill Inc. has
been canceled because Pyongyang has not come up with the zinc shipmentspromised in return.
Americans are barred from trading with thenation under an embargo that is not likely to
be lifted until Pyongyang comes to the peace table with South Korea, theUnited States and China
and cooperates on such issues as inter-Korean talks and cessation of missilesales. The four
parties would also begin discussions on how to end the nearly five-decadeKorean War, which
technically continues, albeit in a state of cease-fire.
And despite cautious efforts to set up a free-tradezone in the northern border area of
Rajin, international investors continue to balk at the regime's unpredictability,secrecy and
insufficient legal protections. In addition, many experts assert that NorthKorea could buy more
food with its estimated $1 billion in annual export earnings but choosesinstead to spend that on
other priorities, devoting a fourth of its budget to defense.
"Is it buying rocket components?"one international Korea specialist asked. "Should we
help feed a people who can aim those rockets at us?"
Despite the complex political and economicproblems, most North Koreans are consumed
with far more basic needs.
During a five-day visit, a Times photographerwitnessed what seemed to be an entire
nation mobilized for survival. In bare feet and plastic rain gear, hundredsof villagers stooped
over muddy rice fields to plant the precious shoots that would offer sustenancein the coming
months. Vans with mounted speakers played music to encourage workers.
So important are these collective tasks thatofficials say they bus city dwellers to the fields
during planting season--along with soldiers, students aged 14 and 17, andconstruction
workers--bringing nonessential projects to a standstill.
Since last winter, for instance, Pyongyangcleric Li has spent each Friday spreading
manure and silt from the river bottom over farmland to prepare it for planting.To help the
national survival campaign, she has also sold back more than 220 poundsof hoarded rice to the
government at five times the price she paid for it.
"As far as I know, lots of people haveturned in their rice savings to the government in the
last two years," said Li, an assistant minister with the Bong Soo Church.
Other villagers labored to clear preciousfarmland of gravel and dirt deposited by two
years of floods. And everywhere, it seemed, people roamed the roads andthe hills in search of
food. Many carried on their backs green canvas sacks filled with wild edibleplants.
Three years of disasters--hailstorms in 1994and floods in 1995 and 1996--wiped out much
of North Korea's southern breadbasket. Those events came on top of dramaticexternal events,
beginning with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea's majorsupplier of fuel.
That idled tractors and fertilizer factories as the country began slidinginto its agricultural crisis.
Another shock came in 1995, when China abruptlycanceled grain exports to all nations,
including 600,000 tons to North Korea. Although China renewed exports toits Communist ally
the following year, providing half the shipment of 500,000 tons for free,the flooding and
previous year's shortage wiped out much of Pyongyang's grain reserves, saidSelig Harrison, a
North Korea specialist with the Woodrow Wilson International Center forScholars in
Washington.
"Everything hit North Korea at once,"Harrison said.
The lack of fertilizer, fuel and workablefarm machinery continues to stymie efforts to
coax more bounty from the land. But North Koreans seem to be tackling theirtasks gamely.
"Many rice fields are still covered withgravel. We are not getting the supply of crude oil,
gasoline and diesel fuel in a timely manner," said one Pyongyang official,adding that it took
more than four hours to make the 100-mile journey from the capital to thenorthern border city
of Sinuiju, which was heavily hit by flooding from the Yalu River.
But, he said, "instead of asking foroutside help, we are trying to be self-sufficient."
Fuel Shortage a Looming Hurdle
The fuel problem, however, looms as one ofthe largest obstacles in getting the growing
supplies of international aid to the hungry populace. During a recent tripto North Korea,
members of the Los Angeles-based Korean-American Sharing Movement saw traincars filled
with bags of grain left idle on the Chinese side of the border because NorthKorea lacked fuel to
transport them across.
The group's 1,000 tons of corn, purchasedin the Chinese city of Dalian with $170,000 of
$300,000 in donations raised so far, was eventually moved across the Yaluto Sinuiju after
special arrangements had been made with China. But Paek Young Ho, generalsecretary of the
North Korean Red Cross Society, acknowledged that supplies cannot alwaysbe promptly moved
because of fuel shortages and a growing Chinese reluctance to provide thetrain cars, which are
not always promptly returned.
Other problems, officials say, include a widespreadmisunderstanding--even
disinformation--about their operations that could be inhibiting more generousaid offers. In one
prominent flap recently, Seoul "confirmed" reports in the Japanese,South Korean and
Portuguese media that North Korean soldiers had seized at gunpoint nearly5,000 tons of World
Food Program maize, fueling concerns about diversion of international aidto the military.
But after the program issued a denial anda press release denouncing the report as a
"blatant disinformation campaign," South Korea issued a correction.Myat said his organization
carefully monitors all shipments, including by means of spot checks at nurseries,hospitals and
other targeted recipients, to make sure the food has been properly distributed.In 19 months, the
group has not experienced one case of diverted supplies, he said.
"Every delivery . . . has been scrupulouslyadhered to," he said.
Myat also denounced as "rubbish"reports of parents selling children for food and of
cannibalism, along with other sensational tales.
Secretive Regime Given Share of Blame
Others, however, lay the blame for the murkyuncertainty surrounding the food shortages
squarely on North Korea's secretive regime. The most effective way to promotean accurate
understanding, they say, would be for the regime to open up.
North Korean officials acknowledge that themilitary receives food from a separate
distribution system, but they declined to answer questions about the sizeof military rice
reserves, calling it a "national secret." One knowledgeable source,however, said the military has
stockpiled reserves to last several years, the amount Pyongyang believesis necessary to sustain
the force in the event of attack.
"We are prepared to protect our nationalsovereignty," a North Korean official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
* Watanabe reported from Tokyo and Kang fromUnpa. Times staff writer Rone Tempest
contributed to this report from Beijing.
Copyright Hyungwon Kang, Teresa Watanabe / Los Angeles Times
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