The Cause of the acute food crisis in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Abstract

This article shows that despite geographic and demographic obstacles, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had achieved a considerable degree of self-reliance in economic development by the late 1970s and was nearly self-sufficient in food grain production until the mid-1980s. However, the DPRK's economy became highly strained and increasingly vulnerable to external shocks due to its failure to make a changeover from extensive to intensive sources for its economic development, its rigid central planning system and huge defense expenditures as DPRK-Soviet and DPRK-China relations deteriorated in the post-1960 period. Moreover, this article shows that the structure of the DPRK's economy compounds its economic plight. Pursuing a self-reliant development strategy, the DPRK regime has promoted a comprehensive and integrated national economy in which each sector of the economy is closely interlinked while the foreign trade sector has been reduced to a minimum. The insular nature of the DPRK's economy makes it prone to negative ripple effects and vicious cycles of economic downturns whenever a shock, whether internal or external, is introduced into the system. Seen in this light, the weather-related natural disasters of the mid-1990s were not the major cause of acute food shortages. Rather the cause of hunger lies in the deeply rooted structural problems of the DPRK's economy.