N. Korea in drought, taps rice reserves, spies say

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is releasing emergency military rice reserves as its food shortage worsens, South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday, with a heat wave and drought reducing the country’s supply.

North Korea’s reported food problems come as its economy continues to be battered by the protracted covid-19 pandemic. While mass starvation and social chaos have not been reported, observers expect a further deterioration of North Korea’s food situation until the autumn harvest.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service said in a closed parliamentary committee meeting that North Korea is supplying rice reserved for wartime use to citizens with little food, other laborers and rural state agencies, said Ha Tae-keung, one of the lawmakers who attended the session.

Ha cited the intelligence agency as saying an ongoing heat wave and drought have wiped out rice, corn and other crops, and killed livestock in North Korea. The intelligence agency said North Korea’s leadership views fighting the drought as “a matter of national existence” and is focusing on increasing public awareness of its campaign, Ha said.

Another lawmaker, Kim Byung-kee, quoted the intelligence agency as saying that North Korea normally needs about 5.5 million tons of food to feed its 26 million people but is currently short 1 million tons. He said the agency told the lawmakers that North Korea is running out of its grain stockpiles.

The price of rice, the most important crop in North Korea, once doubled from early this year. The price briefly stabilized in July before soaring again, Kim cited the National Intelligence Service as saying.

Ha said North Korea is trying to control the price of grains to which its public is most sensitive.

Kwon Tae-jin, an expert at the private GS&J Institute in South Korea, said North Korea is probably releasing the military reserves to sell at a cheaper price than at markets to stabilize prices. He said rice prices are “considerably unstable” because the government is limited in how much rice it can supply.

It isn’t the first time that North Korea has released state rice reserves, but the assessment that it doesn’t have much left in its stockpiles is worrisome, Kwon said.

In past years, he said, the country’s needs were met by the smuggling of rice and other grains via its porous border with China. But North Korea’s pandemic-caused border closure makes it difficult for such smuggling to happen, worsening this year’s shortage, Kwon said.