Seoul (EFE).- The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has urged to generate “a radical change in agricultural production” in an important plenary session of the single party, convened at a time when it is believed that the food situation in the isolated country could be getting worse.
According to the state news agency KCNA today, Kim delivered a speech to conclude the debate on the first item on the agenda, the content of which has not been specified, during the second day of this plenary meeting held in Pyongyang.
Kim assured that the main objective of the meeting is to find “the most pressing tasks, the long-term scientific goals and the viable way to successfully achieve grain production this year by causing a radical change in agricultural production throughout the years.” coming years in order to lay the foundations for the stable and sustained development of agriculture”.
“Its historic conclusion, which comprehensively addressed the strategies of the revolutionary struggle for rural development, will serve as a guide for action,” adds the KCNA text on Kim’s intervention, which assured that the goals can be achieved if there is a “strong leadership” in the party and there is a “united force on the part of the people”.
On this second day of the plenary session of the Workers’ Party -whose total duration is unknown- the second item on the meeting’s agenda was also discussed, the execution of the national economic plan, and the third, the improvement of the “financial work of the State”.
exceptional plenary
This somewhat exceptional meeting – the party held one just two months ago and usually convenes two plenary sessions a year, the first of them in mid-spring – comes at a time when the food situation appears to have deteriorated in the impoverished country.
The difficulties caused by the border closures to prevent the entry of the covid-19, the weather conditions or the sanctions that weigh on the regime seem to be behind an apparent drop in the country’s agricultural yields, to which he has referred in the last times the single party.
Specifically, some experts believe that Pyongyang’s decision to tighten control over self-employment in relation to the voluminous -and today apparently non-existent- smuggling that occurred across the border with China and its apparent willingness to re-centralize the trade in the country has worsened a situation that was already bad.
To this can be added another possible negative factor for North Korea in the short term; that the end of the zero covid policy in China contributes to increasing global demand and the prices of its products.
Recently the South Korean Ministry of Unification, in charge of relations with the North, pointed out that the food situation in the neighboring country seemed to be worsening and spoke of deaths from starvation in some regions.
In any case, the strict isolation in which the country has been plunged since January 2020 (currently only the exchange of commercial goods with China is allowed via rail and ship, but the entry of people from abroad, even if they are North Koreans, continues strictly prohibited) makes a reliable evaluation impossible.
satellite photos
Just today, the South Korean Statistics Office published an estimate of the area occupied in the neighboring country by rice crops, one of the main livelihoods of the North Korean population, based on photos taken by satellite.
According to this calculation, North Korean rice fields occupy some 539,569 hectares in 2022, which is 0.8% less compared to the 544,006 estimated in 2021.
The western slope, less mountainous, continues to function as the main pantry of the country, since Hwanghae del Sur, a province bathed by the Yellow Sea in the southwest of the country, concentrates 26% of all these fields.
In turn, the provinces of South and North Pyongang (west and northwest of the country) account for 19.1% and 14.6%, respectively, according to data published by the South Korean Statistical Office.
North Korea, which suffers from endemic malnutrition, suffered a terrible famine in the mid to late 1990s that is believed to have killed more than 3 million people in the country.
