Despite being aware of the worsening food situation, the authorities concealed relevant information from the outside world and their own population. This aggravated starvation in three respects. Firstly, by hiding the reality of starvation in the country, the DPRK violated its own population’s right to information and hindered the people’s ability to develop their own coping mechanisms at an early stage. A number of witnesses underscored that people starved to death in their homes, because they were waiting for the ration distributions to recommence. Secondly, concealing information led to a delay in obtaining international food aid that cost many lives. Thirdly, the secrecy relating to data has made it very difficult for the international community to provide targeted humanitarian and development assistance in the country.
According to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, violations of the ICESCR occur when a state fails to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, the minimum essential level required to be free from hunger. In determining which actions or omissions amount to a violation of the right to food, it is important to distinguish the state’s inability to comply with this obligation from its unwillingness to comply. Should a State party argue that resource constraints make it impossible to provide access to food for those who are unable to secure such access, the state has to demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all the resources at its disposal in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations.852 A state claiming that it is unable to carry out its obligation, for reasons beyond its control, needs to prove a) that this is the case and b) that it has made all efforts to obtain the necessary international assistance and does not impede the delivery of such assistance.
The authorities in the DPRK were well aware of the country’s deteriorating food situation long before appealing for aid in 1995. State actions such as the reduction of rations, or the launch of campaigns such as “Let’s eat two meals per day”, shows that the authorities preferred to take steps that deeply affected the right to adequate food in the country to asking for international assistance.
In his memoirs, former high-level DPRK official Mr Hwang Jang-yop wrote: “People in North Korea were also starving in 1994, however, there wasn’t any news that people starved to death.”853 In fact, all allegations of food shortages were categorically rejected by the DPRK. In January 1994, the spokesperson of the DPRK Agricultural Commission condemned the reports of hunger in the Western media as a “wicked deception to degrade the socialist image of the DPRK”.854 He argued that the DPRK had accumulated a large amount of grain stocks as an important strategic resource.
According to former DPRK officials who have given testimonies to the Commission, the highest level authorities in Pyongyang knew about the details of the famine. Each province had to regularly submit statistics on how many people had died from starvation and how many people were missing from their homes. Those documents were kept confidential.855
At the Washington Public Hearing, Andrew Natsios argued that the system of measuring the height and weight of every child in school once a year was another source of information the state has at its disposition. He also noted that the decision to lower the minimum height requirements for an 18-year-old boy to enter the DPRK military was based on this type of data.856
The Commission finds that there was awareness about the famine situation all the way up to the Supreme Leader. Former officials stated that the provinces submitted detailed reports about the situation to the capital. Kim Jong-il also visited numerous locations in the country as part of his “military first” and “on-the-spot guidance” visits.857 On these occasions, he could not have missed what was happening in the country.
At the London Public Hearing, former KPA officer Mr Kim Joo-il told the Commissioners how Kim Jong-il paid a visit to his military unit and was made aware of the lack of food suffered by the soldiers:
“In 1996, Kim Jong-il had visited Cholwon-gun in Kangwon Province. He came to inspect the battalion himself and he asked to see the food that was being provided to the soldiers. So they showed Kim Jong Il a bowl of porridge. When they turned the bowl upside down there were only three grains of rice.”
Kim Jong-il became very angry and divested the battalion commander of his rank and sent him to a detention centre. However, the food situation for the unit did not improve.858
The practices of the authorities to conceal information have obstructed the development and delivery of targeted and efficient international assistance programmes to address the needs of the most vulnerable.859 Human rights treaty bodies have also repeatedly requested the DPRK to provide them with reliable data and indicators.860 Data, indicators and figures emanating from the DPRK and its authorities have been widely considered to be unreliable.
The data published by international organizations must be treated with caution.861 The unreliability of the data comes, amongst other things, from the inability to perform random and free sampling and to freely access a large portion of the DPRK’s territory. Therefore, the data published is generally an extrapolation to the whole country, based on data gathered in a limited portion of the country in very controlled settings.
4. Actions and omissions of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(a) Reluctance to change
Human rights law does not prescribe any specific type of economic system or nutritional food production strategy. However the national choices must allow the fulfilment of a state’s obligations under international human rights law. The Commission shares the view of the Committee on Ecomonic, Social, and Cultural Rights:
Every state will have a margin of discretion in choosing its own approaches, but the Covenant clearly requires that each State party take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that everyone is free from hunger and as soon as possible can enjoy the right to adequate food. This will require the adoption of a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all, based on human rights principles that define the objectives, and the formulation of policies and corresponding benchmarks. It should also identify the resources available to meet the objectives and the most cost effective way of using them.862
Regarding the right to adequate food, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights formulated a set of human rights based principles that national food strategies must comply with:
The formulation and implementation of national strategies for the right to food requires full compliance with the principles of accountability, transparency, people's participation, decentralization, legislative capacity and the independence of the judiciary. Good governance is essential to the realization of all human rights, including the elimination of poverty and ensuring a satisfactory livelihood for all.863
During the 2009 Universal Periodic Review, the DPRK government reported the following:
Dissolution of the socialist market in the early 1990s and the tremendous financial and economic losses and depletion of material resources owing to the successive natural disasters that started in the mid-1990s brought the gravest difficulties to the economic development of the country. The most serious difficulty was the worsening of the condition of food supply. In 1996 alone, 3,180,000 tons of food was in short supply, thus causing a sharp decrease in the amount of provisions. Consequently, health condition of people in general deteriorated; infant and child mortality rate increased and diseases like infants’ diarrhoea, respiratory tract infection and tuberculosis broke out.864
While factors beyond the state’s control had an impact on the food situation, in attributing the famine solely to these factors, the DPRK grossly ignored the responsibility of its leadership, which imposed a system on its population that proved inadequate to fully implement the right to adequate food. More importantly, the authorities maintained this system despite its manifest insufficiencies.
As described above,865 the DPRK chose to heavily industrialize its agriculture which made it dependent on industrial inputs and fuel. This made the country’s agriculture reliant on external inputs, most of which it received on the basis of subsidized imports from friendly foreign states until the early 1990s. On the basis of an econometric analysis of DPRK agricultural production, scholars Heather Smith and Yiping Huang concluded the following:
The dominant triggering factor in the crisis was the sharp loss of supplies of agricultural inputs following the disruption of the trade with the socialist bloc from the late 1980s…. The contribution of climatic factors to the agricultural crisis, as stressed by the DPRK’s policymakers, was at most a secondary cause.866
The DPRK is subject to heavy annual rainfall and typhoons. A number of experts interviewed by the Commission pointed out that the agricultural policy has exacerbated the effects of these regular natural events. To obtain more arable land, forests were destroyed and mountains transformed into terraced fields. To counter the lack of fuel, trees were cut down to generate wood as a source of energy. This situation has exacerbated the propensity of heavy rains to cause landslides. Erosion has led to riverbeds becoming silted, which means that flooding can occur even after relatively little rain.867 The intensive use of land and fertilizers has also had a negative impact on the quality of the soil. The Commission received evidence from experts on how the overuse of chemical inputs increasingly diminishes the quality of arable land in the DPRK.868
The DPRK is responsible for these decisions. However the greater responsibility of the state lies in its decision to maintain this course, including the highly collective agricultural system, in the face of its overwhelming failure. Little was done to reform the system and to promote incentives for farmers to produce more.
Andrei Lankov, an well-known expert on the DPRK, made the following observations on the DPRK agricultural system:
The forced switch to state farms was a common feature of nearly all Communist states, but the North Korean state farms had some peculiarities. Most significantly, farmers were allowed only tiny private kitchen gardens. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, a farmer usually had a private plot whose size might exceed 1,000 m², but in Kim Il Sung’s North Korea private plots could not exceed 100 m², and not all farmers were allowed to have plots even of such small size. The assumption was that farmers, being deprived of any additional source of income and calories, would have no choice but to devote all their time and energy to toiling in the fields of the state.869
In a recent article, Mr Lankov notes:
If the government of the DPRK had conducted land reform along the lines of that which occurred in China during the 1990s, not one single North Korean would have died from starvation. In the late 1970s, China divided all land owned by the state between farmers. It dissolved all state-run farms which, incidentally, were similar to DPRK’s cooperative farms. Ultimately, when Chinese farmers began to work on the land they owned themselves, the country’s agricultural yield increased rapidly. Within five to six years of implementing the land reform, China’s food production increased 1.3 times.870
A very similar conclusion was presented by agricultural expert Dr Kim Young-hoon at the Seoul Public Hearing. He noted that the DPRK’s highly collectivized farming system is inefficient as there are no incentives for farmers. Mr Kim concluded that it needs to be reformed.871 Much of the testimony that the Commission received from former DPRK citizens, including former farmers, point in the same direction.872
Despite the fact that some government-led reforms have been introduced – such as increasing the area of individual farming plots – the basic principles of the system have largely remained unchanged.873 The DPRK government did not profoundly restructure the system in order to improve the food situation. Instead, the focus has generally been on managing particular emergencies and keeping the situation under governmental control. Improvements in the economic and food situation in the DPRK since the worst period of mass starvation can be mainly attributed to spontaneous efforts of the population rather than reforms initiated by the state. Even the formal establishment of general markets may be seen as an attempt to recover control over the informal markets that were created in the mid 1990s. One expert observed that “markets are one of the regime’s greatest domestic dilemmas—it loathes them and probably fears them, but it cannot close them down.”874
Underlying the unwillingness to radically reform the system is an apparent fear of losing control over the population. A reported quote from Kim Il-sung that was related by Andrew Natsios during the Washington Public Hearing encapsulates the political calculation made by the authorities:
“Once the famine started they knew what was going on, and they chose not to take action to protect the population… There are reports of Deng Xiaoping telling Kim Il Sung that he needed to open up to the West, to move to a market economy, to reform his economy, and the apocryphal response from Kim Il-sung was‘if you open the window the flies will come in…. If we let them in, then the economy will get out of control. We will lose the control’.”875
Subsequent pronouncements by Kim Jong-il also show that the DPRK prioritized calculations of political power and ideology over the reality of the suffering of people. In a 1995 treatise, published while mass starvation was already underway in the DPRK, Kim Jong-il underscored the primacy of ideology:
If the ideological bulwark falls down, socialism will be unable to defend itself no matter how great its economic and military power may be. On the other hand this proves how great a role ideology plays and how important ideological work is, to accomplish socialism.876
In a subsequent speech, delivered in December 1996 at Kim Il-sung University, Kim Jong-il explicitily justified his refusal to undertake structural reforms with the need to protect the political system and its leadership and prevent the type of popular uprising that occurred in Eastern Europe. Kim Jong-il said:
In a socialist society, the food problem should be solved by socialist means. If the Party lets the people solve the food problem themselves, then only the farmers and merchants will prosper, giving rise to egotism and collapsing the social order of a classless society. The party will then lose its popular base and will experience meltdown as in Poland and Czechoslovakia.877
During the 2009 Universal Periodic Review, the DPRK government stated:
The state pursues the policy of assuming responsibility for the supply of food to all population. The state has, in accordance to the Law on Food Administration, the labour law and the regulation on Distribution of Food, provided a cheap, timely and equitable supply of food to the workers, office employees and their dependents. However, the considerable decrease in the grain output due to serious natural disasters that repeatedly hit the country since the mid-1990s adversely affected the people’s living in general, and in particular, the exercise of their right to adequate food. The Government, while meeting the pressing demands with a large amount of food obtained through its appeal for international humanitarian assistance has taken measures to solve the food problem on its own through the increased agricultural production.878
In June 2012, the DPRK government reportedly adopted a new set of economic reforms. The Commission has received only limited information about these reforms. The main concept of the officially called “Economic Management System in Our Style” is to shift management powers from the state to individual factories, enterprises and farms.879 As far as the agricultural sector is concerned, farmers should give 70 per cent of the total harvest to the state and keep 30 per cent for themselves. In the past, the state collected a certain amount of food regardless of the year’s harvest. Under the new plan, the state’s share was based on the five-year average harvest collected from each farm. Accordingly, farmers will receive a larger share when the harvest is plentiful, and less when the harvest falls short.880 The Commission is not able to assess the results of the reforms or their actual level of implementation.
In his 2014 New Year’s message, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un called for “decisive improvement in guidance and management of economic projects”. However, measures for agricultural reform and opening the economy were not mentioned in his speech.881
Agricultural expert Dr Kim Young-hoon, who studied the aforementioned economic reform on the basis of information available outside the DPRK, was sceptical whether it would lead to marked improvements: “TheKim Jong-un regime will also experience the same kind of capital shortage [as Kim Jong-il] and the system reform will not go forward… I am predicting that the situation will not get any better.”882
Another agricultural expert, who used to be a researcher at Pyongyang University, noted that even under the new system, farmers still have to hand over 70 per cent of their harvest to the state, which limited their incentive to produce more. Moreover, given the isolation of the DPRK from the world economy, farmers lack access to new technologies that are necessary in order to effectively increase the production.883
Andrei Lankov suggested that the reforms are fraught with uncertainties, but that first results are quite encouraging. He noted that Chinese experts who had recently visited the DPRK have claimed that the reforms have produced an immediate 30 per cent increase in output.884
(b) Preventing and punishing alternative views
Instead of opening up a dialogue and engaging in a participatory approach with the population, in particular farmers, to find a solution to the food situation, the DPRK has used ideological indoctrination to preclude criticism throughout the years of crisis.
In 1991, the government launched the “Let’s eat two meals a day” campaign. Later on, the Arduous March rhetoric was put in place to supposedly help people endure increased economic privations and keep them from thinking about and openly discussing alternative economic systems.885 In this context, any critical remarks about underlying political reasons of the situation were considered a political crime and therefore harshly punished.
One witness testified that the government kept promising that the population would eventually receive food and that even the Supreme Leader did not have enough food. The population was forced to attend periodic official lectures about the food situation, while the actual distribution of food was postponed. The content of these lectures was in particular focused on the fact that the Supreme Leader could not sleep well because of the lack of food for his population.886
Another witness said that during the famine, compulsory lectures and education classes to boost the morale of the population were often imposed on the starving population. “People were told that it was the Arduous March and everybody had to endure it. No one could complain. Otherwise they were sent to political prison camps.”887
The DPRK government also blamed outside forces, especially the ROK and the USA, for the hardship the country was enduring.
A high level official said he was aware that people were starving, but he did not do anything about it. He himself believed everything the Party said, including that the DPRK faced food shortages “as a result of sanctions by capitalist countries against them.”888
At the London Public Hearing, Mr Kim Joo-il stated that near the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, soldiers often found packages containing radios, rice and candy from the ROK that were sent by balloons that ROK citizens launched near the border. Mr Kim explained that soldiers received indoctrination training, and they were told that eating any of these ROK goods would make them sick and that their flesh would “start to rot”.889
Alternative views on policies and programmes could not be freely expressed. The Commission received testimony from several people who were aware of the grave inefficiencies of the system and the need for reform but were not allowed to discuss the issue. Most did not even try to do so because they were aware of the possible consequences for them and their families.
A former researcher of Pyongyang University stated that government officials knew that the collective farming system was not working but no real reform was initiated. He was frustrated with the stagnant situation and wrote a letter directly to the Supreme Leader. In his letter, he compared the productivity of collective farms and private farms, which was five times higher. He attached documents with his research results to corroborate his arguments. In response, he was threatened:
“A central party person came to me after three months. He said that I had to deal with science and not with politics.”890
(c) Confiscation and dispossession of food
In various circumstances, ordinary people have been dispossessed of their means of survival. Harvests were taken away from farmers without legal basis. Citizens were robbed of their food or dispossessed of international aid intended for them. Testimony given to the Commission confirmed the practice of soldiers looting food:
According to one former soldier,
“In the DPRK army, everyone had to take turns cooking for the other soldiers. When it was my turn, my commanding officer provided me with some rice, but with nothing to make sauce or side dishes. The night before my cooking assignment, one of the most senior soldiers in his unit woke me up. Other soldiers were already up. The senior soldier gave us bags and told us to go to the village and steal what we could. The looting was so good that I managed to make 6 side dishes. The next day, I was praised for this achievement in front of the whole unit.”
The witness stated that stealing from the population did not stop after the famine, but continued throughout his time in the army. As far as he is aware, it continues up to this day.891
One person who used to work as coal miner stated that during the harvest season they received an order from the Party to give 70 per cent of their total harvest to the military.892
Witnesses confirmed that these practices are still ongoing.
A farmer stated, “In 2012, we were told that we could keep 90 per cent of the harvest. ... But when it was harvest time, the military came and took everything.” The same person reported death by starvation in her village during the same period.893
Testimony received by the Commission, in particular from former army officials and soldiers, confirm a pattern of diversion of international food aid by the military.894 Civilians interviewed by the Commission had, in the vast majority of cases, not seen any humanitarian aid.895 Some donors insisted on the presence of international observers during the distribution of food aid. Several witnesses who fled the DPRK mentioned that after the international monitors had observed the distribution and left the area, the authorities forced the population to give back the majority of the food distributed to the authorities.
One witness stated:
“Food provided through humanitarian assistance was given to the authorities. I had to buy the food aid that was sold in the market. The food that had been distributed to the population had to be handed back to the authorities. They left the population with 500 grams of food instead of the 5 kilograms that were originally distributed.”896
A former high level DPRK official estimated that 80 per cent of the food was taken back after the international monitoring took place.897
One witness testified that while he was at a military academy in Pyongyang, he and his colleagues received an order one day to remove their military clothes and insignias. They were then asked to put their fingerprints on a document stating that they would not reveal anything they were going to do. They were taken to the Nampo port and had to open 40 kilogram sacks of rice with United States and ROK logos, pour them into a machine and fill the rice into 50 kilogram sacks with no logos. They loaded the new sacks onto 30-40 unmarked trucks.898
Another witness stated:
“From 1996 to 1998, a lot of aid (food and fertilizer) came into the country via the Nampo port. From my house, I could see cars line up to collect the aid goods, usually marked with USAID and ROK labels. Military personnel would put on civilian clothes and paint over their vehicles’ military number plates, so that they did not look like the military and could get the food. Military officers sold the rice and supplies to the black market in order to buy alcohol and cigarettes. They also came to our house and insisted we buy these items from them.”899
One witness described the same modus operandi in another part of the country. “Because of my job, I saw food coming at the Chongjin port in 1998-1999, including aid coming from the United Nations. The North Korean guards used to wear plain clothes and pretended to be civilians in order to get food.” The witness said that he remembers boats with 20,000 tons of food approaching the Chongjin port.
“When the United Nations officials left, the food was given to the military. The monitoring group of the United Nations usually wanted to check that the food was distributed. They had to pre-notify the field visit. The North Korean authorities used to take the United Nations officials to the food distribution centre. Once the United Nations officials left, the North Korean authorities took the food back from the population. At the time when all this was happening, you could see dead bodies on the streets, people who had died from starvation.”900
A former high level official was told by colleagues of Department No. 2 (Military Affairs) of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea how they proceeded when NGOs insisted on monitoring the food distribution. The authorities gave strict instructions to the population not to eat the food aid received. Instead, they were to give it secretly back to the authorities. The population was told that the rice distributed was needed to secure the survival of the military. People complied, because most families had a family member serving in the military. Families had to return the 20 kilograms of rice they received from NGOs in exchange for 1 kilogram of inferior corn provided by the government.901
