Article 25 (3) of the DPRK Constitution declares: “The state provides all the working people with every condition for obtaining food, clothing and housing.” Since the entire economy is state-owned, this implies that the state has an obligation to provide each and every citizen in the DPRK with enough adequate food.
The DPRK food rationing system consists of two sub-institutions: the Public Distribution System (PDS), and the food rationing mechanism in cooperative farms.In theory, all non-farm households are entitled to state food rations provided by the PDS. The Administration and Economy Committee in each province is responsible for providing food for the population and organizes the rationing procedures independently. However, the central government sets up national rationing norms and arranges provincial food trade in order to enforce the norms in all provinces.680
People working in cooperative farms do not have access to the PDS. Cooperative farms were established to incorporate all farm households, land and other agricultural and social properties in a village. Member households are the formal owners of the cooperative farms. Member households do not receive a salary from the government. Instead, they should receive food rations that are taken from the farm’s outputs. The state agricultural agency at county level, the County Management Commission, makes all decisions relating to a cooperative farm, including crop selection, output distribution and farm marketing. Like the PDS, cooperative farms define a standard ration for each farm household: the ration for an adult farm labourer usually corresponds to the PDS ration for a heavy industrial worker. The rationing mechanism in cooperative farms supplied farm households with annual rations in one single distribution, carried out shortly after the autumn harvest was completed, whereas the rest of the population was supposed to receive rations twice a month from the PDS. The system was designed so that if a farm household was given more grain than the standard ration, the cooperative farm can sell the difference to state procurement agencies, and when grain distribution is lower than the standard ration, the farm provides the difference in the form of either grain loans or aid from communal funds.681
The theoretical calculation of rations under the PDS depended on work and other factors. For instance, an average working adult received a grain ration of 700 grams a day, a housewife was given merely 300 grams, and a person doing heavy physical work (for example a miner) was eligible for the highest daily ration of 900 grams.682 The ratio of rice to other (less nutritious) grains in a ration depended largely on one’s place of residence. The more important the work was for the state, the higher the ratio of grain that the worker received.683
The public distribution system progressively failed to meet its ration targets even before its collapse in the mid-1990s. The chart below summarizes the decreases in the food ration amount since 1955. While in the 1970s, the rations may have been enough to feed a normal adult, the rations steadily decreased from 1987.
Norm
Ration for Official Worker
1955
Basic Formula: from 900 grams of daily rations for heavy industrial workers to 300 grams for children
700 grams per day
256 kilograms per year
1973
Deduction of four days rations from monthly
rations for so-called “war-time grain reserves”
(average 13 per cent deduction)
608 grams per day
222 kilograms per year
1987
10 per cent deduction for so-called “patriotic grain”
547 grams per day
200 kilograms per year
1992
10 per cent deduction from adult rations
492 grams per day
179 kilograms per year
Figure 1. Changes in food rations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Koreabefore 1994684
The end of the 1980s can be considered as the beginning of the period of starvation in the DPRK. In 1987, the PDS rations, stable since 1973, were reduced by 10 per cent.685 The distribution became increasingly unreliable in the 1990s.
One witness stated that he first saw starvation in 1987 in Rason. “A woman died from starvation. The Party said that she died from a heart attack.”686
Another witness stated that until the beginning of the 1990s, people received a steady ration, which was distributed every 15 days. One ration consisted of brown flour, corn and potato. The amount varied depending on the status of the recipient – for example, a working man got 700 grams, a student 500 grams, and dependents 300 grams.687
Another witness testified that he first started experiencing food scarcity in 1991-1992.688
In 1991, the DPRK authorities launched a “Let’s eat two meals a day” campaign in an attempt to get the population to accept further ration cuts.689 Except for the army and heavy industrial workers, a further 10 per cent was cut from the PDS rations for the population in 1992.690
A former military officer stated that food for the military became scarce in the early 1990s. In 1991, a patriotic rice donation campaign was launched, asking every household to save 10 kilograms of rice and donate it back to the government to feed the military.691
(c) Hunger and mass starvation in the 1990s
The food situation continued to deteriorate. Reportedly, food riots took place in 1993.692 Diplomatic negotiations were opened by the DPRK with countries in Asia to obtain emergency food shipments.693 From 1994, state actions became increasingly harsh towards specific parts of the population. The PDS was suspended in four northern provinces, North and South Hamgyong, Ryanggang and Kangwon.694 In addition, a campaign was launched to re-collect 5 kilograms of grain that had already been handed out to farmers as part of their annual ration.695 As a result, an increasing number of DPRK citizens went to China and Russia in search of food.696
The DPRK authorities initially denied the existence of a problem that it could not resolve without international aid. Faced with the undeniable reality of mass starvation, this attitude slowly changed.697 In February 1995, the DPRK authorities announced the receipt of food aid from an international NGO. In May 1995, the President of the ROK, Kim Young-sam, made a public offer of unconditional food assistance to the DPRK. Later that month the government of the DPRK admitted that the country was experiencing a food shortage. It asked the ROK and Japan for food assistance. An appeal for aid was also made to the United States of America.
Natural disasters exacerbated the availability of food. Between 30 July and 18 August 1995, torrential rains caused devastating floods in the DPRK.698 On 31 August 1995, the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs stated that, for the first time, the DPRK sought their assistance.699 There were more floods in 1996, followed by “the longest spring drought in recorded history”.700 As a result of the natural disasters, the United Nations reported “major devastation for the agricultural sector” and a total of 1.5 million tons of grain lost.701 Additionally, the transportation system was critically affected, hindering the distribution of food to a large part of the population.
However, the foregoing chronology of events contradicts the DPRK’s often reiterated argument that the floods were the main cause of the food crisis. Starvation was already a problem before the 1995 floods. Japan’s Acting Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mr Shimanouchi Ken underlined in September 1995: “Before the flooding, on 30 June 1995, the Japanese Government decided to supply a total of 300,000 tons of rice to [the DPRK] from a humanitarian point of view, in response to a request from [the DPRK], which was suffering from a serious food shortage.”702
The Commission received a large number of testimonies from people who suffered starvation and witnessed the death of their relatives and children during this period. People undertook desperate acts to survive. Some made porridge out of the roots of grass or cooked the inner bark of young pine branches. When the harvest was over, some picked the roots of rice plants, mixed and ground them with corn to make noodles out of them. People eating such rough food substitutes, suffered from constant indigestion and diarrhoea, and in the most severe cases, death.
At the Seoul Public Hearing, Mrs C testified: “My father, because of malnourishment, passed away early in the morning of the 16th of February 1996… In April 1997 my older sister and my younger sister died of starvation. And, in 1998, my younger brother also died.”703
At the Washington Public Hearing, Ms Jo Jin-hye described the malnutrition experienced by her and her family during the famine in the 1990s. Her two brothers and her grandmother died of starvation:
“When my younger brother was born… my grandmother actually wanted to kill [him] because my mom was very undernourished and she was not able to lactate. [My mother] begged my grandmother saying, ‘Please do not kill the baby.’ … I had to take care of this baby brother. So I was piggybacking him around the town and sometimes my grandmother had to carry him around to make him stop crying. But as I mentioned, because there was no food, he was not able to stop crying. … [My] baby brother died in my arms because he was not able to eat. And because I was holding him so much, he thought I was his mom. So when I was feeding him water, he was sometimes looking at me smiling at me.”704
At the London Public Hearing, Mr Choi Joong-hwa stated: “Within five months from when I came back from the army in the 1990s my older brother died and, the next year, my younger brother died. My third brother died of malnutrition … later on.”705 When he had to bury three of his brothers who died from starvation he thought that there was something wrong in the DPRK: “My brother survived the war in the fifties and why he had to die [in the 1990s]? Why did my brothers have to die in peacetime?”706
A woman described the food situation in South Hamgyong Province after 1995. Her father died in February 1995. Her two sisters suffered from malnutrition. The witness stated: “My [older] sister’s dying wish was to eat noodles, but there was no money to buy even one bowl of noodles. She died in 1997. My younger sister died just one month later. Her dying wish was to eat a slice of bread. My younger brother had been working at the Koowon coal mine from 1995, but he was so weak he was fired. He died of malnutrition on the train on the way back home. I found his body.”707
At the Seoul Public Hearing, Ms P said that five sons of her neighbour died of starvation and that some people looking for food in the mountains died because they ate toxic mushrooms.708
Mr Kim Gwang-il described the “great famine” at the Seoul Public Hearing:
“It’s as vivid as if it happened yesterday. In the 1990s, especially in Hamgyong region, the famine began in 1994. … in one day, 80 people from [my neighbourhood] died. So many people died that we didn’t have enough coffins so we borrowed [traditional burial boards] to give them burials. We didn’t have any wood to even give tombstones. That’s how many people died.”709
At the Seoul Public Hearing, Mr A described the period between 1997 and 1999 as the “great famine”, the most difficult time. He said that the distribution of rations stopped during those years.710
Mr Ji Seong-ho described how he lost his left hand and part of his left leg in March 1996. Hehad been starving and was looking for food or money to buy food. He had got on a moving train to collect coal to sell, but as he had not eaten for many days, he fell off the train and the train ran over him, cutting off his left arm and leg. Mr Ji said that in the winter of 1990 there was nothing for him and his family to eat: “We would eat tree bark, and we would get the roots of the cabbage under the ground, but that was just not enough. As time passed, our grandmother and other weak people were just not able to move at all.”711
At the beginning of 1996, the DPRK authorities made an official announcement that the PDS would stop providing food rations until May of that year. Reportedly, by 1996, wild food accounted for some 30 per cent of the population’s diet.712 By 1997, the PDS was estimated to be supplying just 6 per cent of the population. In 1998, the state was not supplying anyone for large parts of that year.713 In January 1998, there was an official announcement that individual families were henceforth obligated to assume responsibility for feeding themselves rather than relying on the PDS.714 The country’s rapidly deteriorating food situation was reflected in a nutritional survey conducted by the United Nations, which was released in December 1998 and showed that 16 per cent of children were acutely malnourished and 62 per cent were suffering chronic malnutrition.715
Many interviews described how people were not receiving food, leaving them with no choice but to try to obtain it from other means, including begging or engaging in activities deemed illegal by the authorities.716
At the Seoul Public Hearing, Mrs C said that in South Hamgyong Province the provision of rations through the PDS stopped in 1994.717
At the Seoul Public Hearing, Mr Kim Kwang-il described the food distribution in South Hamgyong Province: “I realized the need for freedom in 1996….All I had to do was work because the government was giving me the rice and food. And that’s what I did up until 1996 but the rations stopped in 1996. And people started doing business, committing crimes, people started stealing.”718
When the PDS stopped in 1995, one witness started trading by selling items on markets. She also sometimes went to the parents of her husband’s students’ to ask for food.719
Another witness testified that people in the DPRK were selling all sorts of things to survive, including drugs and copper stolen from state businesses. The witness described the predicament the population found itself in as follows:“Obeying the rules in the DPRK, you will not be able to survive. However, if you are caught breaking the rules, you can get arrested and have your life taken away.”720
At the Tokyo Public Hearing, Ms Saito described selling wire around the country to survive. The illegal business required inconspicuously transporting the wire on trains. Ms Saito sewd the wire into her clothes, making them heavy and difficult to wear, but usually preventing detection by train guards. She told the Commission of the desperate measures she saw one young woman take:
“[Ï]n front of me, a lady who was around her 20s was there standing with her baby on her back. I think she was also there for some kind of transaction and she was on her way back. In that sense, a lot of people in North Korea really suffered from food shortages, but then North Koreans were really kind, they have kindness in their heart. This lady with the baby on her back; she was standing in front of me, and she was trying to make sure that her baby is not crushed. People would be helping her out saying that ‘Make sure the baby is not crushed’.”
Ms Saito and the young woman with the baby were taken off the train by police. Ms Saito knowing she was carrying wire understood why she was asked to follow the police, however she could not understand why the young woman was also asked.
“She only had a baby on her back and she had a very small bag in her hand, and I was wondering why she was caught. But I was waiting and the police came back – this time, he was with nobody. It was just me and the woman. I asked her, ‘Don’t you want to feed your child; it’s been a long time.’ She said, ‘It will be okay.’ I was really wondering why the baby was so quiet even after 6 hours or 7 hours ride on the train….
After my interrogation was over, the police told the woman to put the baby on the desk, and suddenly the woman started to cry and I was wondering why. The woman did not put the baby down, she just kept crying and the police also was wondering why. The woman was using a cloth, a wide band to tie the baby on her back, and she took the baby off and laid it on the table, but then I suddenly realized that the baby was probably 18 months old or less than 2 years old; it was a boy. I saw red blood around the stomach, and the police asked what this was all about. The woman was simply crying and the police suddenly ripped the baby’s torso apart and about 2 kilograms of copper wire was found inside the baby’s stomach. This just told me that this is how far you have to go in order to keep living here in North Korea.”721
(d) Seeking alternatives to State distribution
The failure of the PDS forced people to find their own coping mechanisms to avoid starvation. The informal markets were spontaneously established by the population, without this being a state policy choice. The jangmadang (market place) started as “farmer’s markets”, where people sold agricultural produce they had grown in small gardens and other plots of land around their houses. Collective farms also set aside a portion of the rice they produced in order to exchange it for agricultural supplies they needed for the following season, because they knew the state would fail to provide such supplies to the farms. They sold or exchanged this stored rice in the newly emerging markets. The rudimentary jangmadang economy, which developed naturally with no laws or regulations, was at first an illegal, or black market. However, by the late 1990s it had reached all parts of the DPRK. In 2008, it was estimated that informal economic activities accounted for 78 per cent of the total income of DPRK households.722
Testimonies received by the Commission confirm that people engaged in market activities, by selling videos, cigarettes and other items, to earn money to buy food and complement whatever insufficient rations they still received through the PDS.
One witness said that in the 1990s the food rations were halved. Therefore, his family had to supplement the ration through the market and trading with China.723
Another witness also underscored that food became scarce in the 1990s. Food smuggling and black markets for rice emerged as a consequence. Before the food became scarce, there were no proper market places. When Kim Il-sung died, even the distribution of food rations stopped totally and market places became the only places to obtain food. 724
From 1992, one witness, then a teenager of 14 years, engaged in business by selling videos on the black market. Because he engaged in this business, he was often arrested.725
Another witness claimed that the food situation was good until 1995. In 1996, his family started selling belongings from their house. After all their belongings ran out, the witness tried to sell cigarettes and vegetables in the market.726
One witness described the development of the “Talligi economy” in the 1990s. He explained that “Talligi”, which literally means “running” in Korean,refers to the work of procuring goods in a small city and transporting them to the countryside to profit from price differentials. People usually sold products coming from Rajin-Sŏnbong (Rason Special Economic Zone). Most of the goods were made in China.727
A married father with two children said that the food ration was never enough for his family of four. His wife had to conduct illegal activities in order to get more food for the family. She did some farming and sold liquor and beans to make tofu covertly.728
The development of markets had a profound impact on the economy of the DPRK. Markets became an alternative to the PDS. They also provided opportunities for some groups of the population to increase their revenue, for instance through trade. Various elements determined whether one can benefit from the markets including place of residence; occupation; ability to engage in corrupt practices; and access to foreign currency (through official employment, nonofficial economic activities or remittances from relatives in China, Japan and the ROK).729 Some officials benefit from the markets, by diverting food to make a profit and/or by obtaining bribes in relation to market activities. Previously marginalized groups have become even more vulnerable in this context.
Markets continue to have a big impact on the physical and financial accessibility of food. People without financial resources or the capacity to trade are effectively shut out from the market.
One witness from Nampo in South Pyongan Province, said that rice was 500-600 won per kilogram in the market and the witness could not afford it.730
Another witness stated that in 2010-2011, no food was distributed. She estimates that 40 per cent of the population could not afford buying any food when she left.731 The witness emphasized: “Those who do not have money, will starve.”
In the Tokyo Public Hearing, Mr Ishimaru Jiro of Rimjin-Gang, a media unit of Asia Press which maintains a network of undercover journalists in the DPRK, noted that the current price of the rice on the market is around 5,000 won per kilogram. Mr Ishimaru highlighted that the average salary of public servants is 2000-3000 won per month. According to him, the problem in the DPRK is access to food. There is a lot of food sold in the market, but people cannot afford it.732
In one confidential interview a woman stated that in 2012, the price of rice soared and most people could no longer afford it. “The poor and the weak die of hunger”, she added.733
