Hunger and Human Rights:
The Politics of Famine

The famine had profound consequences for North Korean society. Families were forced into coping behaviors such as gathering wild foods, selling assets, and engaging in various forms of petty trade, barter, and illicit exchange. Markets sprung up not only as a matter of policy, but as households bartered goods or whatever could be stripped from places of employment for food that had been illicitly diverted from cooperative farms and hidden plots.

Faced with this loss of control, the government continued to criminalize the very coping strategies that allowed people to survive and even added new controls. During famines, people travel, either to relocate to a destination where conditions are less severe, or to trade. However, all travel within North Korea is controlled and requires permits. Initially, the government relaxed restrictions on internal travel for the purpose of securing food, but undocumented movement remained illegal and thus vulnerable to low-level extortion and corruption (Good Friends 2000).

The fundamental right to leave one's country is enshrined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the government of the DPRK is a state party. Nonetheless, the North Korean penal code prescribes sentences of up to three years in a prison-labor camp for unauthorized departure. These camps are characterized by extreme deprivation, torture, and high rates of death while in detention (Hawk 2003).

As the ranks of internal migrants and cross-border refugees increased, the North Korean government responded in a variety of ways, including by establishing a network of ad hoc detention facilities, again, characterized by extreme deprivation, torture, and in the case of pregnant women repatriated from China, forced abortions and infanticide (Hawk 2003). Adults engaged in illegal internal movement and famine-orphaned children (the kotjebis or "wandering sparrows") were subject to detention in so-called "9-27 camps" named after the date (September 27, 1995) when North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issued the edict authorizing their establishment. Men over 16 who had crossed the border were vulnerable to incarceration in prison-labor camps and long-term political prison camps that constitute the North Korean gulag.

The collapse of the social compact in the 1990s and the bottom-up marketization of the economy carried at least the promise of a sector of the economy outside state control. But this marketization suffered from the absence of legal foundations or institutions, and was undertaken in the context of macroeconomic instability that has spawned its own set of problems. What began as a socialist famine arising out of failed agricultural policies, a misguided emphasis on self-reliance, and the collapse of the PDS, evolved into a chronic emergency more akin to those observed in market economies. Access to food was increasingly a function of the ability to command resources in the market. Again, the urban population found itself at a great disadvantage in this setting.

During the great famine of the mid-1990s, the PDS proved unable to provide even the minimal amount of food needed for human survival. What is striking, however, is that this system of distribution has never fully revived. Figure 4 shows the data on average rations distributed through the PDS since 1995. These averages hide important variations across provinces and over time, and in recent months there is evidence that the situation has deteriorated (Brooke 2005). Seasonal variations are particularly important; as recently as 2001, PDS distributions dropped sharply during the "lean months" of spring. But the larger picture is still striking. Even after the famine, and with the tremendous multilateral aid effort, the PDS currently distributes less than 350 grams of food per person daily, well short of the 450 grams deemed an absolute minimum caloric intake.

The flip side of this observation is that households out of necessity are securing a larger share of their food through the market, including general markets in larger cities, farmers' markets, and more informal markets or exchange networks (such as barter, transfers from relatives in the countryside, and corruption). A simple balance sheet approach that weighs total domestic production, imports, and aid against food distributed through the PDS suggests that over the past five years most of domestic production (less on-farm consumption) has probably gone into the market. The PDS has increasingly become a mechanism for distributing aid. Total aid receipts are equal to roughlythree-quarters of the food that North Korean authorities claim is being distributed through the PDS.

This declining reliance of households on the PDS is confirmed by a series of refugee surveys done by several different researchers (Robinson et al. 1999, 2001; Good Friends 1998, 2000; Chang, forthcoming). They paint a consistent story: The PDS ceased to deliver food to large segments of the population in the mid-1990s, and families were forced to adopt a variety of coping strategies to survive. A recent survey of nearly 1,000 refugees in China confirms the marginality of the PDS system for many people.

In July 2002, the government undertook policy changes that seemed to ratify, or at least de-criminalize, the implicit marketization that had been occurring for years. This is not the venue to go into a detailed analysis of these policy changes, but they have proved problematic in both design and implementation. The WFP has begun to conduct household surveys and canvass local officials, and as result has been gathering more detailed information on the effects of the reforms. These studies conclude that the steep industrial decline that began in the 1990s continues to this day. Many factories are running well under capacity, and as a consequence as much as 30 percent of the workforce outside of agriculture may be unemployed. Among those who remain employed in the industrial sector, there is considerable underemployment, and some workers who continue to receive salaries have seen their wages cut by 50 to 80 percent in real terms. Women appear to be particularly affected by these developments with an unemployment rate double that of men.

A second aspect of the reforms was a large administrative increase in official prices and wages. The price increases were designed in part to ratify the emergence of market prices that were far higher than official ones; the wage increase was designed to offset these price increases and thus to maintain real incomes at least to some extent. Yet the lack of revival of industrial sector production and the authorities' decision to monetize the fiscal costs of subsidies to loss-making state-owned industrial enterprises has meant too many won chasing too few products. The result has been a high, sustained inflation that is estimated at more than 100 percent annually since August 2002.

As the market has come to supply a greater and greater share of total consumption and as prices have begun to spiral up, a new divide has appeared in North Korean society. On the one side are those who can augment their wages with foreign exchange, which at least partly insulates its holders from the effects of ongoing inflation and other sources of income. Farmers have also probably done reasonably well as a result of rising food prices, although it is difficult to be sure. On the other side are those households, mostly urban, who lived on shrinking local currency wages and lack access to foreign exchange, other income-earning opportunities, or alternative sources of food such as family connections in the countryside or abroad. Food prices have risen far faster than nominal wages, resulting in a sharp decline in the welfare of those forced to purchase food in the market. The most disturbing implication of this growing marketization is the creation of a "new poor," with the cities once again being severely affected. What began as a socialist famine has evolved into an entitlement food emergency, with position in the market a crucial determinant of access to food.

According to WFP surveys, households dependent on the PDS-overwhelmingly in the cities and towns-spend roughly one-third of their income on PDS-supplied food alone. A typical family of four with one income would spend 40 percent of its budget on PDS-supplied food. Some households surveyed by the WFP report spending 50 to 60 percent of their household incomes on PDS food. However, recall that in many areas and time periods, the PDS is supplying households with only one half of an absolute minimum caloric need, and in some cases less than that. If these households are nonetheless spending one-third of their incomes on PDS food, this leaves only one-third of their budgets to cover remaining caloric needs through other sources, needs that are as high as half of minimum requirements. Market prices are conventionally thought to be three or more times higher than PDS prices even after the price reforms raised the prices charged to consumers through the PDS. As a result, WFP surveys are finding that some households are spending up to 80 percent of their income on food, inclusive of non-PDS sources.

How do households cope? What is striking is the continuity in coping behaviors between the high famine period and the current setting, despite a massive increase in food aid. According to the WFP, 40 percent of interviewed households report receiving food from relatives in rural areas. Sixty to 80 percent of PDS-dependent (i.e., urban) households and 65 percent of cooperative farm households report gathering wild foods. Many households and workplaces maintain "kitchen gardens" and, as in other cases of economic stress around the world, there are extensive anecdotal reports of households selling or bartering personal belongings for food and engaging in other socially disruptive coping behaviors, including crime, human trafficking, and prostitution.

According to the WFP, households with a single earner and dependents and PDS-dependent households without access to "kitchen gardens" are the most vulnerable. The targeting strategy of the WFP may also miss important segments of the vulnerable population. For example, households with children-a targeted group-may benefit from the supplementary rations provided through institutions. But households without children that are not participating in food-for-work programs would not receive any benefit from aid, except indirectly through its effect on market prices.

The reality may be even worse. One interpretation of the price increases, as noted previously, is that they were simply bringing PDS food prices in line with the market. Yet there is also anecdotal evidence that even the pretense of universalism has been breached. Recent reports suggest that the authorities have significantly reduced the number of households being issued PDS ration cards. These anecdotal reports are fully consistent with the most recent refugee surveys. One such survey finds that less than 4 percent of the refugees interviewed "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the statement that there had been an improvement in food availability since the July 2002 policy changes were enacted. Moreover, 85 percent of these refugees, who admittedly may not be representative of the country as a whole, "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the statement that North Koreans are voicing their opinions about the chronic food shortage (Chang, forthcoming).

In sum, although the period of high famine has passed, North Korea continues to experience chronic food shortages that are hitting hard at an underemployed and unemployed urban working class in particular. Targeting children is important but insufficient; many vulnerable households are not on the target list. Moreover, given the political stratification of North Korea and the inability of the WFP to achieve minimum standards of transparency and monitoring in its operations, deserving households-including politically disfavored households-are not getting the food intended for them or are being denied relief altogether.

Obtaining better information through baseline surveys and focus groups would be invaluable in gaining a better understanding of what is happening in North Korea, and the WFP and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are making efforts in this regard. But better information alone will not significantly improve the effectiveness of the humanitarian effort in North Korea. To see why requires a more thorough consideration of the issues of monitoring and diversion of food aid.