Food outranks foreign policy in Kim’s new year message

KIM JONG-UN put solving North Korea’s hunger crisis front and centre of a new year speech that left out any mention of foreign policy.

The North Korean leader focused on food security and development at a plenary of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The impoverished, nuclear-armed nation has been under a rigid selfimposed coronavirus blockade that has hammered its economy.

In a speech on Friday, Kim acknowledged the “harsh situation” in 2021 as he laid out plans for the coming year, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

He described the challenges of 2022 as “a great life-and-death struggle” and set “an important task for making radical progress in solving the food, clothing and housing problem for the people”, KCNA said. Concerns have grown about a full-blown food crisis and a UN human rights expert warned in October that the most vulnerable were “at risk of starvation”.

Analysts pointed to the impact of Covid as the reason for the sharpened focus on the economy.

“The pandemic continues to constrain North Korea’s diplomacy, decimate its economy, and make border controls the top security issue,” Leif

Eric Easley, a professor at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said.

Chad O’Carroll, of specialist website NK News, said: “Kim might be aware that revealing military development plans while people are suffering food shortages and harsh conditions outside of Pyongyang might not be such a good idea this year. North Korea is more or less in survival mode for 2022 and doesn’t really know what to do... (about) foreign policy right now.”