Back to the Nineties

The North Korean government is reinstating the same policies that led to the mass famines of the Nineties:

Recent decisions by the North Korean government to suspend the operation of the World Food Programme, ban the private sale of grain, and fully reinstate the discredited Public Distribution System could lead to renewed hunger for North Korea’s already poor and destitute people, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 34-page report, “A Matter of Survival: The North Korean Government’s Control of Food and the Risk of Hunger,” examines recent worrisome developments in North Korea’s food policies, its marginalization of the World Food Programme (WFP), its refusal to allow adequate monitoring of food aid, and the implications of the government’s new policies. Human Rights Watch noted that only a decade ago, similar policies led to the famine that killed anywhere from 580,000 to more than 3 million, according to independent researchers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

“While most international discussion of North Korea is about nuclear weapons, hunger remains a serious problem,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Regressive policies from a government that doesn’t allow free expression or independent observers to monitor the situation could someday lead to a repeat of the food crisis of the 1990s.”