North Korean Famine - Current Status

Current Status

North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, the European Union and others. In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered.

In the mid-2000s, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea, and the government was reported to have mobilized millions of city-dwellers to help rice farmers. In 2012, WFP reported that food would be sent to North Korea as soon as possible. The food would be processed by a local processor and delivered directly to North Korean citizens.

Agricultural production increased from about 2.7 million metric tons in 1997 to 4.2 million metric tons in 2004. In 2008, famine continued to be a problem for North Korea, although less so than in the mid to late 1990s. Flooding in 2007 and reductions in food aid exacerbated the problem.

In 2011, during a visit to North Korea, former US President Jimmy Carter reported that one third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth because of a lack of food. He also said that the North Korean government had reduced daily food intake from 1,400 calories to 700 calories in 2011 (by comparison, a normal food intake for a healthy European is 2,000-2,500 calories per day). Some scholars believed that North Korea was purposefully exaggerating the food shortage, aiming to receive additional food supplies for its planned 2012 mass celebrations by means of foreign aid.

Escaped North Koreans reported in September 2010 that starvation had returned to the nation. A study in 2011 by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who had defected to China found that 18-year-old males were 5 inches shorter than South Koreans their age. Roughly 45% of North Korean children under the age of five are stunted from malnutrition. Most people eat meat only on public holidays, namely Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il’s birthdays. One report by the Tokyo Shimbun in April 2012 claimed that since the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011, around 20,000 people had starved to death in South Hwanghae Province. Another report by the Japanese Asia Press agency in January 2013 claimed that in North and South Hwanghae provinces more than 10,000 people had died of famine. Other international news agencies have begun circulating stories of cannibalism.