Fat fears to the fore amid food shortage

Little more than 20 years ago, North Korea suffered a famine in which people dropped dead from hunger in the streets and hundreds of thousands died. It is a sign of how things have changed that the country now has a smartphone app aimed at woman anxious to manage their weight.

The app, called Female Health Journal, is available to North Koreans on an internal ‘‘intranet’’ unconnected to the world wide web, to which more and more North Koreans have access. Like Western health software, it can be used to track calorie consumption and calculate body mass index (BMI).

‘‘BMI is an index necessary not just for maintaining a beautiful figure,’’ says an article on North Korean government website DPRK Today. ‘‘Multiple researchers have confirmed that an abnormal BMI . . . is related to disease and longevity.’’

Research by the United Nations has found that today’s North Korean children are suffering less from stunting caused by malnutrition, which used to be widespread. However, the growth of millions of children is still limited by a lack of adequate food.

According to North Korean government data, the national rate of stunted growth dropped to 19 per cent in 2017, from 32 per cent during the previous survey eight years earlier. Even in the capital, Pyongyang, the home of the ruling elite who are the last to suffer food shortages, one in 10 children is stunted.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation has said that 10 million people in North Korea – about 40 per cent of the total population – are in urgent need of food assistance, after record dry weather over the past year hindered the growth of crops.

North Korea claimed that it had a bountiful harvest last year, yet observers have warned that drought and a lack of basic farming materials such as fertiliser make such claims far from the truth. Satellite images suggest that cereal crops were badly affected by drought and that food production was at its lowest level in five years.