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North Korea and the coronavirus: why internal controls may be working

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

At this point, it seems unlikely that not a single case of the coronavirus would have reached North Korea, despite government media claims. The border to China is quite porous even when controls are tight, and the provinces bordering North Korea had seen, as of last week, some 200 cases. The government has ordered schools shut for one month starting five days ago, on February 20th. Unsurprisingly, it has taken special care to protect Pyongyang from the virus, and face mask distribution goes first to the one percent.

The economic effects of all this are very troubling. As this blog has previously noted, markets and society overall seem to be taking the border closure much more seriously than sanctions, and have reacted with much more anxiety than when new rounds of sanctions measures have been levied by the international community in the past. Prices have climbed quite drastically, as we shall look at in some detail in this post. They have risen by much more in Hyesan than in the rest of the country, which tells us something interesting about the government’s internal controls. That differences in market prices are increasing could be a sign that internal controls on travel across provincial boundaries are being enforced quite effectively. When traders cannot as effectively move their goods to where demand is the highest, prices will increase. One also has to bear in mind that Hyesan is very dependent on trade with China to begin with, and we should therefore expect prices there to increase disproportionately.

(My apologies for the awkward look of the graphs — please click for full size!)

In normal times too, prices tend to be higher in Hyesan than in other cities. But usually not by that much. Notice what happens around  January, though: prices skyrocket all over the country but they do so by much more in Hyesan.

This is particularly evident when we look at price differences. Normally, prices are between 5–10 percent higher in Hyesan than in both Pyongyang and Sinuiju. Since the border closure, however, they have gone beyond 20 percent over both cities, according to price observations from the past few weeks. 
Again, the border closure to China may be a central part of the explanation. But rice itself isn’t typically a good that North Korea relies so much on Chinese imports for. We don’t know the precise proportions, but likely, most rice consumed in North Korea in an ordinary year is grown within the country. A likely conclusion is, therefore, that the closure of provincial borders within North Korea is being enforced with some efficiency, making it much more difficult for market traders to transport goods such as rice between different markets in the country. This adds to the already stark economic difficulties from the closure of the border to China. Many other prices have risen drastically as well: gas prices in Hyesan are now 46 percent higher than in late December of last year, and 38 percent higher in the country as a whole. The government has attempted, reportedly with some success, to institute price controls on the markets, but as the story goes with such state attempts in general, they are unlikely to last as black markets arise to respond to shortages.

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Posted in Agriculture, Black markets, Coronavirus, Economic reform, Health care, Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Almost a year after the alarm bells: following up North Korea’s food crisis (and an aid success story?)

Thursday, February 20th, 2020

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

There exists two very radically different narratives on North Korea’s food situation and harvest of last year. The strangest pat of the story is that the state, likely through its different arms, are able to hold both stories at once. The first was the one trumpeted out by the North Korean government and international aid agencies last year (as well as some scholars), that North Korea was facing a famine. The second one is from Kim Jong-un’s plenum speech in late December, where he claimed that North Korea’s harvest was the largest one “on record“.

The Red Cross (IFRC) released an assessment report last month, and though it leaves many questions unanswered, it’s a fascinating and much more detailed read than most assessments of North Korea’s food situation over the past two years. I list some of the highlights below.

First, the most remarkable finding of the report is perhaps how big of a difference aid and support to irrigation can make. I have previously written that the most likely reason the food situation turned out better than expected is that China stepped in with aid. This still seems to be the most plausible scenario, but it is also possible that aid came not in the form of food deliveries, but in equipment and fuel for irrigation, most likely it was a mix of both. If the report is to be believed, and I see no reason to doubt its veracity and methodological grounding, we can extrapolate that improving irrigation can more than double harvests in certain environments. The table below comes from page 5 of IFRC, “DPR Korea: Drought and Food Insecurity Final Report DREF Operation n° MDRKP013,” 17 January, 2020, http://adore.ifrc.org/Download.aspx?FileId=286144, accessed February 20, 2020:

(Note: mt/ha = metric ton/hectare. Click to enlarge.) 

As the table shows, expected versus actual harvests of early crops more than doubled in three of the communities surveyed. One farmer interviewed in the report says that thanks to the IFRC water pumps, their harvest was the best in a decade in the end, and not the worst, as the international community first projected. The total cost of the operation was the equivalent of less than $250,000 for a strong impact on communities holding 34,414 people. Scale that up by 100 and we have $25 million for measures that could drastically help around 3.5 million people. And so on and so forth. Of course, this isn’t a precise or grounded calculation by any means, but it does give a sense of the proportions at hand. $25 million is a third of what North Korea spent on tobacco imports from China last year. Remedying difficult farming conditions isn’t necessarily all that expensive, but can be very, very effective. (Before drawing any certain conclusions from this, do be sure to read the report. It highlights the specific conditions of the localities in question.) It is often said that North Korea’s geographical features make it naturally inhospitable to agriculture and food production, but efficiency and capacity could be vastly improved through investments in agricultural infrastructure.

Second, even with the improvements that came after the initial food crisis alarm bells, none of them make it even remotely likely that Kim Jong-un’s claim of the “best harvest on record” was true. The report highlights some of the difficult weather conditions the country faced in 2018 and 2019. For example:

The agricultural production this yea r(2019) in DPRK was seriously impacted by the after-effects of the droughts that have occurred consecutively over the past 5 years.The situation was worsened by th elittle snowfall last winter and almost no rainfall in the 1st quarter of this year. The unusually low levels of precipitation continued in April and May,combined with higher than usual temperatures. As a result, the water levels in the reservoirs are much lower than normal. These conditions have remained the same during the summer months.

(Source: p. 3 of the report.)

Third, the report raises several intriguing questions about the IFRC in North Korea. To the best of my understanding, the IFRC has a chapter in North Korea but like all organizations in the country, it is for all intents and purposes a government entity. The report references its personnel several times — ” DPRK RCS has a good volunteer network established in these areas” (p. 2), “the team also coordinated with and consulted the Red Cross branches, local authorities, and the State Hydro-Meteorological Agency” (p. 2), “workshop…with community people” (p. 8), et cetera — and it would be very interesting to learn more about how the organization functions on the ground, how its staff are recruited, what “volunteer” actually means, et cetera.

Notwithstanding the questions that reports such as this one give rise to, they are crucial resources for knowledge on North Korean agriculture and food production.

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Did North Korea really see its best harvest “on record last year?

Friday, January 17th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

As I and Peter Ward discovered some weeks ago, the claim by Kim Jong-un that North Korea had its “best harvest on record” did not make it into the English-language summary of Kim’s plenum speech put out by KCNA. Several media outlets have picked up on this claim, and that is not surprising. Not even a year ago, last spring and summer, both the North Korean government and UN organs sounded the alarm bells that North Korea’s harvest was so disastrous as to suggest a famine might be looming.

So what happened?

First of all, it should be noted, as always, that one must be extremely cautious in studying data on anything related to the North Korean economy. Most people who follow North Korea are well aware of this but especially when it comes to an issue like this, one cannot be cautious enough.

I focus here on the claim by Kim that the harvest was the best “on record”. It may well have been a good harvest, or at least a much better one than anticipated. This seems to be the case. The only attempt I’ve seen at a numerical estimate comes from South Korea’s Rural Development Administration. They estimate that North Korea’s harvest grew by around two percent in 2019 over 2018. This sounds fairly plausible and could perhaps be explained by weather conditions unexpectedly improving, or fertilizer donations from China, and the like. Or the government and FAO’s projections were simply wrong from the beginning.

To understand why it is so unlikely that this year’s harvest would be the best on record, we have to look at what ‘the record” really says. The following graph shows North Korean harvest figures between 1990 and 2017, as recorded by the FAO. These figures are not independently recorded or verified but, to the best of my knowledge, generated by FAO in cooperation with the North Korean government, or provided directly by the government. Usually, that would be a problem, but here, it’s actually quite helpful since it helps us analyze the claim about the “record”.

Graph by NK Econ Watch/Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein. Data source: FAOSTAT.

I downloaded these numbers from the FAO database some months ago. For whatever reason, I’m unable to access the data at their website at this time of writing, and therefore, can’t fill in the data further back. This data also differs somewhat from other data on North Korean harvests from the World Food Program and FAO. Still, they match quite closely with other data the two organizations have published in recent years about North Korean food production. Again, keep in mind that this data is produced and published in concert with the North Korean government. In that sense, these numbers are the “record”.

Over the past few years, estimated harvests have gravitated between four and five million tons in milled rice equivalent.  (You can read more here about what that actually means.) In 1993, North Korea’s record of harvests notes 7.5 million tons. Harvests hovered around 8 million tons in the 1980s – again, to the best of my recollection, as I can’t access the FAO statistics database numbers of North Korea at this time of writing.

Graph by NK Econ Watch/Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein. Data source: WFP/FAO. 2019 is a projected figure.

For Kim’s claim to be true, therefore, this past year’s harvest would have had to go from around five million tons in 2018, to surpassing eight million tons in 2019. I am no agricultural economist, but Kim would likely need something like a miracle of nature for this to happen. I am not aware of North Korea’s landmass suddenly doubling, for example, or the amount of arable land increasing by one third overnight. Therefore, Kim’s claim is most likely, beyond reasonable doubt, simply not true. Note also that outlets such as Daily NK have reported that the government has taken predatory measures against grain trade as a result of what the outlet describes as “poor agricultural yields”.

In other words, there is very little to back up the claim made by Kim (and subsequently by North Korea-affiliated Choson Sinbo). This claim is a break with a pattern over the past few years, where North Korean media has been very frank – often, probably exaggerating – in describing difficulties and damage caused by flooding and inclement weather. There are several reasons why this may have changed with regards to the harvest. For one, food security a very basic need for any country. With bad food security, North Korea appears weak in the face of sanctions. It would hardly be the first time the North Korean government lied for strategic, propaganda purposes. It is also possible that harvests were much better than anticipated, and that Kim’s claim is merely a strong exaggeration. Perhaps “best on record” should be read as a superlative, rhetorical claim rather than a literal one. At the end of the day, we simply don’t know, and the ways of the inefficient North Korean bureaucracy are mysterious.

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North Korea’s largest fertilizer plant reportedly shut down

Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Fertilizer production is one area where UN sanctions appear to have rather dire unintended consequences. Daily NK reports:

Daily NK reported in February of this year that production at the complex was gradually falling.

UN sanctions and the ensuing ban on the import of oil, a key ingredient in chemical fertilizers, may have also been a factor in the factory’s closure, the source added.

FAILING TO MEET DEMAND

North Korea’s fertilizer production is currently meeting only one third of the country’s total demand. North Korea uses a total of 1.55 million tons of chemical fertilizer per year but only produces about 500,000 tons, Daily NK sources said.

North Korea relies predominantly on imported fertilizer. Farm workers reportedly prefer the fertilizer from the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex because it is superior in quality than fertilizer imported from China. The military was given priority for fertilizer produced at the complex.

The shortage of fertilizer is adversely affecting agricultural production, particularly given that this year’s production of fertilizer has fallen far short of demand, Daily NK sources said.

“Collective farms have had an overall poorer harvest this year compared to the last,” said one of the sources. “Farmers are blaming the lack of fertilizer for the poor harvest.”

UN SANCTIONS HAMPER PRODUCTION

North Korean authorities have made various attempts to normalize fertilizer production. For example, the authorities have installed large ammonia synthesis facilities and introduced 4,000 horsepower compression engines to help increase fertilizer production, Daily NK sources confirmed.

The import of a wide range of machinery and raw materials is banned under UN sanctions, however. Some North Korea observers argue that the ban on these imports only make it harder for North Korea to improve its agricultural production by itself.

“North Korea needs a dependable supply of coal, oil and electricity, and a total revamp of its fertilizer manufacturing facilities to normalize fertilizer production. None of this is possible due to UN sanctions,” a former North Korean agricultural official familiar with fertilizer production in the country told Daily NK. “If the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex remains nonoperational, it is highly likely next year’s agricultural production will be adversely affected.”

WORKERS REASSIGNED TO OTHER PROJECTS

Daily NK sources also reported that some 70% of the workers at the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex were sent to construction sites throughout the country after the complex shutdown. These construction sites included the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, the Hamhung-Wonsan highway, and the Tanchon Power Plant. Some workers were even sent to the fields to farm.

“The Hungnam Fertilizer Complex employed more than 10,000 workers. Lots of workers complained after they were sent to do other work following the shutdown,” one of the sources told Daily NK. “Many people wanted to work at the complex because it gave employees a stable supply of rations. That’s all in the past now.”

Article source:
N. Korea’s largest fertilizer complex no longer operational 
Jang Seul Gi
Daily NK
2019-11-06

Note that the article confirms that rations are (at least in this case and most likely usually, if at all) distributed by enterprises as remuneration rather than through PDS centers.

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Rice prices up in North Korea, market price data says. How bad is it?

Friday, August 2nd, 2019

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Asia Press reports that rice prices have “skyrocketed” in North Korea this month:

The price of domestic rice, which stood at roughly 4,500 won (about 0.53 USD) per kilogram for most of the year, began to rise in July, surpassing 5,500 won (about 0.65 USD) per kilogram by the end of the month.

Multiple reporting partners living in the northern regions of the country were asked to investigate the reason behind the rise in the price of rice.

A reporting partner living in a city in Hamgyong Province explained, “The rice merchants say that, ‘domestic rice is scarce, so it is only a matter of time before it runs out’. The rise in price will likely continue from after the next harvest until the end of the year.”

Still, rice is not disappearing from the markets. Imported Chinese rice is sold at stable prices across all markets.

Most of this Chinese rice, however, is old and was harvested some time ago. The North Korean government, though, continues to import the low-quality, cheap Chinese rice, favoring ‘quantity over quality’.

Domestically produced North Korean rice, on the other hand, is not old and sticky. Due to its higher popularity, it is generally 5% more expensive than Chinese rice. This slight price difference was very stable and had remained unchanged over the last 20 years.

The cause of the domestic rice’s scarcity and subsequent rise in price is presumed to be the effects of last year’s heat wave and drought on production.

A rise from 4,500 won to 5,500 in only a few weeks is indeed quite noteworthy and potentially alarming. But what does context tell us?

I know very little about where in the country Asia Press sources its price data from, but I suspect it’s primarily or perhaps even only North Hamgyong province. It does seem like this steep price rise may be a somewhat localized phenomenon. Looking at the Daily NK price data gives us a little bit of a clue. It hasn’t been updated since July 23rd, so it may be that it will catch up and register similar shifts later on. But looking at the numbers for the past few weeks, prices in Hyesan have increased much more than in Pyongyang and Sinuiju.

So this might, for various reasons, be a localized phenomenon.

It should also be noted that prices usually rise during the summer months, as the next harvest draws closer, and storage runs lower and lower. Prices last summer around this time were much lower than present, but in 2017, they were significantly higher. So I would caution against drawing any hard conclusions as of now, and hopefully the next report by Daily NK will tell us more.

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Farmers in North Korea sent to labor camps for stealing potato seeds

Tuesday, June 11th, 2019

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem if farmers worked for themselves to a greater extent, rather than primarily to fill the state quota…

Daily NK reports:

A farmer at a potato farm in Yanggang Province was recently sent to a forced labor camp for stealing seeds meant for planting, a Daily NK source reported on June 3. The incident provides a glimpse into the difficulties faced during the potato planting season  in May.

The farm, a major producer of potatoes located in Taehongdan County, Ryanggang Province, is in an area where locals plant potato seeds for a two-week period starting in early May to ensure the seeds are planted on time. Potatoes in North Korea are important because they can replace rice and wheat and are the major source of calories for some parts of Ryanggang Province.

North Korean farmers refrain from removing the germinal disk from potato seeds and plant potatoes whole to increase yields. The state-run publication Rodong Sinmun recently reported that potato production reached record levels last year.

“There have been many cases where farmers have stolen potato seeds during the ‘potato planting battle’ period,” a source in Ryanggang Province told Daily NK. “The authorities made an example out of two farmers who stole seeds by sending them to a disciplinary labor center for six months.”

At larger farms in Taehongdan County, farmers use trackers to plant whole potatoes. Farmers working on smaller farms, however, plant the potatoes themselves. The potatoes need to be planted 4-5 centimeters apart, but farmers frequently do not follow this rule. Instead, they plant the potatoes farther apart and then hide the potato seeds that are leftover underground to take home later.

“Farm managers have worried constantly about this issue, so they have told farmers that stealing seeds is tantamount to destroying the Party’s agricultural policies,” said the source.

Poorer farmers, however, are faced with hunger during the planting season so they steal potato seeds regardless of these warnings and even sell the seeds in local markets, the source said.

Taehung-dan is, of course, the site for Kim Jong-il’s famous speech on the “potato revolution“.

Full article:
North Korean farmers sent to labor camp for stealing potato seeds
Kim Yoo Jin
Daily NK
2019-06-11

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North Korean media reports drought impacts on rice harvest

Wednesday, June 5th, 2019

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Yonhap:

North Korean state media highlighted worsening water shortages in one of the country’s major rice-producing regions on Wednesday, raising worries about possible harm to this year’s harvest.

“Not a few areas in the South Hwanghae Province are now facing serious water shortage caused by a combination of various factors,” the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling party, said in an article.

The paper said that the water reservoirs in some areas of the province are falling below normal levels, making it hard for farmers to plant rice in their paddies as scheduled.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency also reported that the drought is hindering rice-planting efforts in South Hwanghae Province, expecting that precipitation will likely stay low until mid-June.

Hwanghae Province is known as one of the largest rice-producing areas for North Korea. The apparently ongoing drought in North Korea is feared to aggravate the already strained food supply in the impoverished state.

Article source:
N. Korean media highlight drought in major rice-producing province
Yonhap News
2019-06-05

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Famine, Amartya Sen, and the Markets of North Korea

Monday, May 20th, 2019

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

The market factor in North Korea’s current food crisis* sometimes seems unclear. Some have talked about the market compensating for what the state doesn’t provide in the event of a food shortage. But the WFP’s methodology should cover for that. They don’t only calculate collective farms yields specifically, but arable land and production in general. Their estimates may (it’s not entirely clear) be based on data for total farmland available provided by the state, and there are some types of plots that wouldn’t be covered in that case. But WFP uses satellite imagery to verify official information on production figures (see p. 5 of their rapid food security assessment for North Korea).

We don’t know how big a proportion of the total amount of food produced in North Korea is sold on the markets, and how much is distributed through state and semi-state channels such as enterprises and factories, which are sometimes partially operated privately. In any case, when they measure total harvests, this likely, at the very least, includes most sources for the food that’s sold on markets. So a drop in total production still means lower market supply.

So why are markets still so important to understand food security, and why is it a problem that WFP cannot access them freely? Rest assured, this is not for a lack of trying. From pp. 6–8 (my emphasis added):

The assessment team also experienced challenges in accessing markets and acquiring market-related data. However, the team was not able to visit farmers’ markets during the field visit. While authorization was granted at national level to visit farmer’s markets, county authorities informed that they were not able to receive any foreign delegation on the day. Market visits are highly recommended to fill this information gap in future assessments. Finally, the team could only gather limited information on people’s incomes and expenditures during the household surveys.

Again, WFP’s conclusions are still highly relevant and meaningful. But as they themselves recognize, markets are crucial for understanding the microeconomic conditions on the ground in North Korea.

The most important reason, perhaps, is that distribution of food is just as important as food production for food security. As Amartya Sen has shown, food security is often more about who has an “entitlement” to food than about precisely how much food is around. This is where North Korea’s markets come in. Total production is an important metric to be sure, but to really understand how food is distributed, and who gets to eat, we have to also understand precisely how the markets work. We need to understand who uses them and how much they’re able to buy. Prices tell us something about overall supply (though as I have argued, probably not the full story).

Especially in a country like North Korea, where access to food and sustenance is a political matter, distribution (or entitlements) is more than total food production for food security. The markets are a crucial mechanism for distribution in North Korea. As long as WFP isn’t allowed to survey them, and to do more extensive household surveys freely in the country, we won’t truly know what food security looks like.

 

*We still don’t know that there is a crisis at hand, although the food situation appears very poor.

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Food crisis looming in South Pyongan, according to Daily NK

Thursday, May 16th, 2019

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Following the recent publication of a UN report stating that North Korea’s food situation is critical and is set to worsen, sources in the country say that efforts for agricultural preparation are facing obstacles in some regional areas.

The DPRK Rapid Food Security Assessment was published by the World Food Program and Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations on May 3, and expressed concern that North Korea could face severe food shortages within the next ten years due to climate change, sanctions and other issues.

“May is the most important month because it is the period that determines whether the year’s harvest will end in success or failure. There’s a lack of workers for planting and this has led to alarm amongst officials,”a South Pyongan Province-based source told Daily NK. “Officials in the major west coast farming areas of Pyongwon, Sukchon and Mundok are concerned about labor shortages.”

North Korea conducts national agricultural support campaigns every spring and mobilizes students, office workers and housewives into the fields. This year, however, the country is facing a labor shortage of more than 50%, according to the source.

“Mobilization orders state that people have to prepare their own food to eat out in the fields,” he said. “Concerns have been raised that there’s a lot of people who can’t do that because there’s no food.”

The North Korean authorities are emphasizing the need to increase rice production and the importance of agriculture through state-run media as the planting season begins, but mobilizing workers into the fields will be difficult due to the country’s poor economic situation.

Concerns have also been raised that laborers will refuse to work in the fields because they are already involved in manure collection activities, construction projects and other labor-intensive work for the state.

Daily NK recently reported that even one of Kim Jong Un’s banner projects, the Samjiyon modernization effort, is facing labor-related difficulties.

The authorities have even created “emergency measures committees” to identify ways to forcibly mobilize residents onto the fields.

“Labor departments in provincial agriculture business committees have formed emergency measures committees to deal with the lack of workers recruited from factories and schools,” said a separate source in South Pyongan Province. “Schools and factories are being investigated and will face legal action if they fail to provide the proper quotas of labor.”

Some parts of the country are faced with issues in agricultural planting stemming from insufficient supplies of farming materials and fertilizer.

“Farmers should have ensured the soil didn’t freeze by creating special seedbeds and covering them with vinyl film. They failed to do so because there was a lack of vinyl film available this year and seeds didn’t grow properly because of the cold,” she said, adding that “they also lacked manure and fertilizer.”

Source:
South Pyongan Province faces severe food security crisis
Mun Dong Hui
Daily NK
2019-05-16

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Washington Post on sanctions and North Korea’s food crisis

Wednesday, May 8th, 2019

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

A few interesting snippets from this Washington Post report:

Analysts say there is no doubt that the ultimate blame for the humanitarian crisis rests with Pyongyang, which has spent hugely on nuclear advances and other military projects while neglecting the welfare of ordinary citizens.

[…]

“Other than the most basic of subsistence agriculture, there is no agricultural sector in the world that can survive without oil-based inputs,” said Hazel Smith, a professor in Korean studies at the SOAS University of London.

Smith argues North Korea can feed its citizens only if it can access oil and natural gas — to fuel farm machinery, power processing and storage facilities, used in irrigation and to transport crops and food.

A United Nations report issued Friday showed more than 10 million people do not have enough food to last until the next harvest. Last year’s crop was the worst in a decade, it said, and was buffeted by dry spells, heat waves and flooding.

But it also found that “limited supplies of agricultural inputs, such as fuel, fertilizer and spare parts have had significant adverse impact.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program spelled out “the unintended impact of sanctions on agricultural production,” most obviously “the importation of certain items that are necessary for agricultural production.”

Article source:

North Korea is facing a food crisis. ‘Maximum pressure’ by the U.S. may make it worse.
Simon Denyer
Washington Post
2019-05-08

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