Rations slashed before summit
North Korea’s citizens have had their food provisions almost halved, and the country has appealed for help from the United Nations, in a memo released just days before a summit between Kim Jong Un and United States President Trump.
The country’s diplomats told its mission to the UN that the daily food ration had been reduced from 550 grams to 300g after a shortfall in the production of rice, wheat, potatoes and soybeans.
In an undated memo, leaked to Reuters, they said: ‘‘The government calls on international organisations to urgently respond to addressing the food situation.’’
According to the document, North Korea’s food production last year was just under five million tonnes – half a million tonnes less than in 2017. It said the government would import 200,000 tonnes of food and would harvest 400,000 tonnes of early crops, but that this would not be enough to feed the population, hence the cut in rations.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN, said Pyongyang had asked for help in making up a shortfall of 1.4 million tonnes.
‘‘The government has requested assistance from international humanitarian organisations present in the country to address the impact of the food security situation.’’
For the time being, there seems to be no risk of a repeat of the famine of the late 1990s, in which hundreds of thousands of North Koreans – or by some estimates millions – died in what the regime refers to as the ‘‘Arduous March’’.
The government blamed the famine of the 1990s on catastrophic floods, but its roots lay in decades of mismanagement that have left North Korea chronically unable to feed itself.
Flat arable land is scarce, and much of the country’s food is grown on mountain slopes that have been deforested, with the result that soil is washed away in heavy rain. Agricultural are primitive.
Western governments face a dilemma in providing aid. Even when aid is not directly diverted to the military, which has been claimed in the past, aid to civilians allows Kim’s regime to give more of its meagre resources to its one million troops.
The timing of the memo’s release may be intended to put pressure on Trump to ease sanctions during the summit in Vietnam next week. It will be the second meeting between the two leaders, after they held talks in Singapore last June. techniques
Decades of mismanagement . . . have left North Korea chronically unable to feed itself.