Famine

’Too many soldiers to feed’: North Koreans fear more sanctions as drought threatens famine

Plight of ordinary people being overlooked amid focus on missile launches and rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

Sanctions and the worst drought for almost two decades threaten to cause severe hardship for millions of people in North Korea, while the country’s leadership continues to plough scarce resources into its missile and nuclear programmes, according to UN agencies and those with contacts in the impoverished nation.

A drought that ravaged crops earlier this summer will leave the North unable to properly feed many of its people, including soldiers in the country’s million-strong army, the groups have warned.

While living standards have improved for some North Koreans under Kim Jong-un’s leadership, many of the country’s 25 million people face a struggle to secure enough food while others risk losing their jobs due to sanctions, according to Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese documentary maker who runs a network of citizen journalists inside North Korea.

“For one thing, there are too many soldiers to feed,” Ishimaru, whose contacts are equipped with contraband mobile phones, told the Guardian at his Asia Press office in the western Japanese city of Osaka.

“And corruption is rife, so that by the time senior military officers have taken their share of food provisions to sell for profit on the private market, there is next to nothing left for ordinary soldiers.”

Ishimaru, who spoke to several contacts about living conditions in North Korea from the Chinese border earlier this month, added: “One of them told me that there was talk of war with the US, but that many North Korean soldiers are in poor physical condition and in no fit state to fight.”

Ishimaru fears the focus on missile launches and rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington means the plight of ordinary North Koreans is being overlooked.

“This is exactly what Kim Jong-un wants – to project an image of strength, that he and the people are one and the same. In an ordinary country there would be riots over the food shortages, but not in North Korea.”

The state’s inability to provide has spawned a private market in food and Chinese-made clothes that is tolerated, if not encouraged, by officials. “The authorities allow it to continue because they know the state would collapse otherwise,” he added.

The UN, concerned about the prospect of widespread malnutrition and other illnesses after the country suffered its worst drought since 2001, has approved $6.3m in aid to help it cope with shortages of corn, rice, maize, potatoes and other essential crops.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ party of Korea, reported that “prevention battles” had been launched to counter an “abysmal drought” that began in May according to the NK News website.

In a special alert last month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated North Korea’s early-season crop production was down almost a third from the same period last year.

“More rains are urgently needed to avoid significant decreases in the main 2017 cereal production season,” the report said. “Should drought conditions persist, the food security situation is likely to further deteriorate.”

It added: “Most of the country’s population is critically dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. At this point, it is vital that farmers receive appropriate and timely agricultural input assistance.”

UN officials are determined to prevent a repeat of a famine in the mid-1990s that, according to some estimates, killed as many as one million North Koreans.

Ishimaru, who last week witnessed “clearly undernourished” soldiers washing their uniforms in the Yalu river near the Chinese border, said: “The drought, combined with sanctions, will take the North Korean economy in a dangerous direction by next spring. This is a time of real hardship for ordinary people.”

As Kim and Donald Trump traded verbal blows over Pyongyang’s missile tests, reports emerged of public discontent towards the regime’s focus on weapons development.

Soon after North Korea successfully launched a Hwasong-14 ICBM late last month, some residents in the country’s North Pyongan province questioned the wisdom of inviting more international reprisals by testing ballistic missiles.

The Daily NK website quoted a source in North Korea as saying that some residents felt “disillusioned by the Kim Jong-un regime, which spends more money on developing missiles than improving their livelihoods”.

The anonymous source added: “Everyone is aware that whenever the regime launches a missile, economic sanctions will follow. There’s nothing to celebrate for ordinary citizens. In the beginning, the residents were proud of the regime openly opposing the US with nuclear development and missiles, but these days, anti-US sentiment has weakened, while respect for the regime has plummeted.”

New UN sanctions that aim to slash by a third North Korea’s $3bn annual export revenue risk creating an extra layer of misery for ordinary North Koreans.

The measures are expected to threaten export-dependent jobs, including those at Musan mine, the country’s biggest producer of iron ore. The ban on seafood exports will hit fishermen whose livelihoods depend on selling part of their catch to China.

Justin McCurry in Osaka

* The Guardian. Wednesday 23 August 2017 04.29 BST First published on Wednesday 23 August 2017 03.33 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/north-koreans-fear-more-sanctions-as-drought-pushes-millions-towards-malnutrition

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 South Korea warns North over ’repeated provocation’ as US-Seoul war games begin

President Moon Jae-in defends joint military drills and urges Pyongyang not to use them as an excuse to increase tensions.

Seoul and Washington have begun annual war games, prompting the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to warn North Korea against using them as an excuse to intensify the “vicious cycle” of tensions.

Tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops are taking part in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military drills, a largely computer-simulated exercise that runs for two weeks in the South.

The exercises are viewed by nuclear-armed Pyongyang as a provocative rehearsal for invasion, and it always meets them with threats of strong military counteraction. North Korea said recently it was considering firing a salvo of missiles towards the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Moon described the exercises as “purely defensive in nature” and told Pyongyang it “must not use it as an excuse to launch provocations that will worsen the situation”.

“North Korea must understand its repeated provocations are what is forcing South Korea and the US to conduct the joint defensive drills, which in turn keeps the vicious cycle going,” the president told a cabinet meeting.

Pyongyang tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles last month that appeared to bring much of the US within range.

That prompted a warning by President Donald Trump that Washington could rain “fire and fury” on the North.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, delayed the Guam strike plan last week, but warned it could go ahead depending on Washington’s next move.

While the allies are pushing ahead with the exercises that date to 1976, about 17,500 US troops will participate in the drills –fewer than last year.

South Korean media suggested the US was considering scrapping a plan to bring in two aircraft carriers to the peninsula.

The US defense secretary, James Mattis, said on Sunday the reduced troop numbers were “by design to achieve the exercise objectives”, denying suggestions Washington had sent fewer soldiers to ease tensions with Pyongyang.

“This is an exercise to make certain that we’re ready to defend South Korea and our allies over there,” he said.

The US Pacific command chief, Adml Harry Harris, arrived in South Korea on Sunday to inspect the exercises and discuss growing North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

On the eve of the drills, North Korea said the US was “pouring gasoline on fire”.

A propaganda video repeated the missile threat against Guam, and showed senior members of the Trump administration being engulfed in flames.

In a commentary carried by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Pyongyang warned of an “uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war” on the peninsula that would entangle the US mainland.

“If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else’s doorstep far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever,” it said.

Agence France-Presse in Seoul

* The Guardian. Monday 21 August 2017 08.05 BST Last modified on Tuesday 22 August 2017 01.05 BST:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/21/south-korea-warns-north-seoul-us-war-games-begin

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 Why Russia holds the key to resolving the North Korea crisis

China is propping up North Korea’s economy, but it seems to get little influence in return.

For more than half a century, China has seen North Korea as a dangerous irritant as much as an asset. It might be useful for keeping the United States off guard, and regarded as an essential buffer by the military establishment, but China would happily ditch it if there were a better option.

The North Korean regime has tended to be characterised as uniquely irrational and unpredictable. From its perspective, however, its behaviour makes eminent sense: in fact, its argument for developing a nuclear capability closely echoes the rationale of the great powers. It has no declared intent to launch a first strike, but as long as others have nuclear weapons, North Korea reasons they serve a deterrent function. The regime also argues, as others have, that there are associated benefits with civil nuclear power.

The long history of North Korea’s nuclear programme follows a recognisable path, previously trodden by Israel, India and Pakistan. It goes from the ambition, formed in the mind of North Korea’s founding dictator, Kim Il-sung, through the long years of a clandestine programme, to the gradual revelation of a reasonably mature, if relatively small, nuclear capability. Signalling is also an element in deterrence. The regime is certainly unpleasant and destabilising, but it is a mistake to imagine that there is no clear purpose and no plan.

The dynasty began life as a Soviet puppet, sandwiched between a powerful USSR and a weak China. But from the start, Kim Il-sung’s muscular nationalism and concern for regime survival suggested that he was unlikely to be a docile dependent of either. His attempt to unify the peninsula by force in 1950 led to a bloody war in which Mao Zedong was obliged to come to his rescue. In the course of that war, “fire and fury” did indeed rain down on North Korea: the US dropped as much ordnance on North Korea as it had during the whole of the Second World War Pacific theatre, including the carpet bombing of Japan. To this day, any building site in Pyongyang is likely to turn up some unexploded ordnance. North Korea was born in a rain of fire, which it has incorporated into its national story.

The regime succeeded in maintaining relations with both its patrons through the dramas and tensions of the Sino-Soviet split to the end of the Cold War. But as Kim Il-sung contemplated the future survival of his regime, he concluded that a nuclear programme was essential insurance, both against his major enemies (the US and South Korea) and any territorial ambitions or excessive demands from China or Russia.

China was and remains North Korea’s major ally, but that does not make North Korea obedient. Their bilateral history is a story of growing defiance and increasing alienation: Kim Il-sung ignored Mao Zedong’s attempt to dissuade him from naming his eldest son, Kim Jong-il, as his successor. He had visited Beijing once a year and had promised that his son would follow suit, but Kim Jong-il only visited Deng Xiaoping’s China once, in 1983. His next visit came three years after Deng’s death, a death for which Kim had offered no formal condolences, as even the most minimal protocol required.

On that visit, Kim heard the unwelcome news that China, already closer to the United States than he would have wished, was to open relations with his bitter rival, South Korea. When the third dynastic leader, the young Kim Jong-un, took power in 2011, relations with China slid further. Tellingly, Kim Jong-un has not visited Beijing at all, nor has China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, visited Pyongyang, although he has held four summit meetings with South Korea.

Kim Jong-un has made his defiance publicly evident. Not only has he chosen to test his missiles and weapons, but he has selected such highly sensitive moments as last year’s G20 summit in Hangzhou to do so.

China is propping up North Korea’s economy, but it seems to get little influence in return, and the value of the relationship has long been openly questioned by China’s foreign policy analysts. China has had little success in encouraging the regime to loosen controls on the economy and make limited market reforms.

In the current crisis, China has consistently urged restraint, while co-operating with the tightening of UN sanctions. Beijing’s attitude, however, remains ambivalent: it doubts that sanctions will be effective, and is highly sensitive to US suggestions that Chinese companies that breach sanctions would be subject to punitive measures. For China, the dangers of bringing North Korea to the edge of collapse are greater than the difficulties of seeking another solution.

Today, North Korea’s relations with Russia are warmer than those with Beijing and if President Trump is serious in his search for someone to solve his North Korea problem for him, he could do worse than to call his friend Mr Putin. No doubt there would be a price, but perhaps Trump would have less difficulty in appeasing Russia than in making concessions to Kim Jong-un.

In July this year, China and Russia put forward a proposal that both sides should make concessions. North Korea would suspend its nuclear and its missile testing in return for a suspension of South Korea’s annual military exercises with the United States. Buried in the joint statement was the assertion that third parties should not negatively affect the interests of other countries.

Both China and Russia aim to reduce US influence in Asia, an ambition greatly aided to date by Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, conceived as a vehicle of US influence; his treatment of long-standing US allies; and his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement on climate change.

Today the US seems poised between demanding that China solve the North Korea problem and beginning a trade war with Beijing. China’s challenge on the Korean peninsula, always difficult, has grown even greater.

Isabel Hilton

* Isabel Hilton is the CEO of the China Dialogue Trust

* The Newstatesman. 21 AUGUST 2017:
http://www.newstatesman.com/world/2017/08/why-russia-holds-key-resolving-north-korea-crisis

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