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An occupational hazard of working on the North Korean food economy is crying wolf. North Korea suffers from chronic food insecurity; this can be seen in the first figure below. We present two estimates of the aggregate food balances, a measure of the surplus or deficit in the aggregate supply and demand for food. The [...]
When it comes to North Korea, it’s a dirty little Washington secret that the “humanitarian community” sometimes looks askance at the “human rights community” out of fear that the latter will mess up the former’s gig. Some of this concern may reflect genuine differences in priorities, though grubby financial and bureaucratic self-interest may play a [...]
As a country, the US does food aid badly. We require that the aid be requisitioned here in the US and that it travel to the disaster zone on US-flagged vessels. These requirements create significant time delays and raise costs (as former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios put it, “food aid often gets there after everyone [...]
At the end of last week, there was mounting evidence that the Park Geun-hye government was trying to lower the temperature on the peninsula and that humanitarian assistance would play a central role. On Thursday, Minister of Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae made the mistake of admitting that the closure of Kaesong was causing pain to [...]
Amidst all the troubles, it is worth pausing to spotlight the good humanitarian work done by NGOs working in North Korea. We were recently reminded by of the work of the American Friends Service Committee. In 1997, AFSC was one of several NGOs that received permission to work directly with cooperative farms. Since then, it [...]
Several recent stories have reminded us of the rent-seeking nature of the North Korean regime. First up: summitry. Evan Ramstad at the WSJ’s Korea Real Time offers a summary of the revelation by outgoing President Lee Myung Bak about a possible 2009 summit, but the Chosun Ilbo fills in really important details. The late summer [...]
Will the nuclear test affect North Korea’s ability to secure food aid? The World Food Program’s experience since the missile test in December suggests that the answer to this question is “yes.” News on North Korea’s food situation is mixed. On the one hand, the FAO/WFP crop assessment estimated that overall food production rose by [...]
North Korea has operated various aid projects in West Africa since the independence period of the early 1960s. In 1997, I visited a juche demonstration farm in a remote corner in Ghana which was supposed to be teaching the local peasants the juche technique for growing corn, the essence of which seemed to be to [...]
The South Korean public regards “economic growth” as the top priority for the incoming Park Geun-hye government according to two recent polls. I recently received a short report from the TNS office in Seoul summarizing South Korean public opinion on a variety of issues, and comparing those views to those found five years ago as [...]
To welcome in the new year, let’s see that’s Juche 102. I thought that I would take a quick stroll through some of the stories we blogged on or at least meant to blog on in the past year. First, as even the most casual reader of this blog knows, we have a thing for [...]
