NORTH KOREA AND THE POLITICS OF
FAMINE PART 3: A question of reform
By John Feffer
(See also PART 1: Failure in the fields - click
here
PART 2: Human rights violations - click
here)
The North Korean government is caught in a double bind on market reforms.
Either it implements modifications that critics dismiss as lukewarm or it
introduces sweeping changes that threaten the social safety net and plunge the
already poor into
more abject poverty. [99 ]
In the first case, Pyongyang is guilty of perpetuating injustice by not
properly fixing a broken system; in the second, it shows callous disregard for
those who can't command market access in order to purchase food. Viewed another
way, the current DPRK system appears to be experiencing the worst of both
worlds: capitalism without proper regulation, and socialism without egalitarian
distribution.
This dilemma poses a peculiar challenge for any transitional economy that
hasn't experienced political transformation: how to change enough to satisfy
outsiders (investors, economists, international financial institutions) without
undermining the source of domestic legitimacy (a more-or-less egalitarian
social contract).
There is an analytical challenge as well. When a government is the sole
guarantor of food security, any and all failures to uphold the right to food
can be placed at its door. In the current, more complex situation in North
Korea, the emerging market and Pyongyang's ongoing reform project must both be
taken into consideration when evaluating the relationship between food policy
and human rights.
Governments can be accused of human rights violations. On the other hand, it is
rarely considered a human rights violation for a market economy to disburse its
rewards inequitably. According to the laissez-faire model, political leaders
are not obligated to intervene in the economy for the purpose of
redistribution; indeed, they are practically enjoined from doing so.
The UN's Human Development Report 2000, however, suggests that each government
has a responsibility to work with markets and other mechanisms to lift its
citizens out of poverty and that citizens should hold their political leaders
accountable to this task. [100] If a country is cautiously nurturing a market
economy, can we evaluate its effort in terms of strengthening or weakening the
right to food without falling into judgments about what governments should and
should not do with respect to the economy?
Let's first look at Pyongyang's reform package in the agricultural sector. The
government has engaged in a number of attempts to improve agricultural
efficiency: double-cropping, introducing a wider variety of crops such as
potatoes and broadening the range of livestock with chickens and goats,
consolidating agricultural lands for greater efficiency, bringing underutilized
land under cultivation, and exploring new seed varieties, nontraditional
fertilizers, integrated pest management, and even organic production. [101]
Some of the changes introduced since the mid-1990s have been de facto responses
to altered circumstances, such as a greater reliance on manual labor to
substitute for a lack of mechanized tools. Other changes have related to the
structure of production, such as reducing the size of work teams and allowing
more flexibility over the dispensation of products from private plots. In the
past five years, local farm managers have been given broader autonomy to
determine what crops each farm should grow and where the surplus will be sold.
[102]
This decentralization of control has taken place within the context of
expanding private markets that have both stimulated and absorbed surplus
production. During the 1990s, the market became a key source of food for the
population, as even the North Korean government admitted in its 2004 nutrition
survey. [103] It is estimated that 60-70% of the population now trades
part-time or full-time on the market. [104] What had been liberalization on the
margins has crept closer to the center, as market relations - and market prices
- increasingly shape agricultural transactions in the DPRK. Pyongyang has not
wholeheartedly supported these developments at all times, however. During the
food crisis, for instance, much of the market expansion was technically
illegal, and this resulted in considerable corruption and police shakedowns
that continue today. [105]
Still, these top-down reforms and the encouragement (or at least the
toleration) of bottom-up marketization suggest that the DPRK leaders are
seriously casting about for ways to fix the systemic problems that accelerated
the food crisis in the early 1990s. These various reforms have led to a
moderate improvement in agricultural production as 2005 yields returned to the
levels of the early 1990s. By expending considerable effort to revive the
agricultural sector, Pyongyang has upheld development as a human right, though
outsiders might disagree about the proper proportion that government and market
should play in the reform process.
If the market is increasingly influential in North Korea, how can we understand
charges that food aid has been diverted to the new private sector? Critics
point to photos and video footage of bags of international aid on sale in
private markets throughout the DPRK. Although others respond that sturdy bags -
a rare commodity in the country - are reused and that the bags in the photos
are usually open, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that aid indeed
shows up in the market, as people barter their food for other needed items.
[106] But the question remains: if food ends up in the marketplace, is it being
diverted? And if it does qualify as diversion, should it be discouraged?
Economist Ruediger Frank is blunt: diversion of food to the market should be
praised, not condemned, for it contributes to change in North Korea and is more
effective than any planned attempts to reform the country. [107] Aid, he
further contends, has a multiplier effect if it is monetized in its circulation
through the economy. [108] Andrew Natsios holds a similar view: "International
food aid has stimulated private markets, reduced the price of food in the
markets 25-35%, and undermined central government propaganda concerning South
Korea and the United States." [109]
Moreover, the diversion does not apply simply to external aid. Pyongyang's own
reforms stimulated a form of diversion as farmers underreported their yields in
order to hold back more food to sell on the market. [110] It is even common for
humanitarian relief to support markets. [111] But in the DPRK, individual
citizens, not humanitarian agencies, bought and sold aid on the market.
Regarding this practice, Marcus Noland raises an important objection. If food
aid trickles down through the economy and doesn't reach those without
purchasing power in the market, the result is "suboptimal". [112] Absent
policies to compensate the new class of market shutouts, this result reinforces
the polarization of wealth inside a country.
The North Korean government has not fully embraced a laissez-faire philosophy,
however. In September 2005, Pyongyang announced that it would no longer permit
the sale of grains in the private markets, and it resuscitated the public
distribution system (PDS) to replace the grain market. There are numerous
explanations behind this revival of the PDS: a response to economic
polarization, an attempt to combat rising inflation, or a method of reversing
absenteeism (since many workers receive food at their workplaces).
But what if this resurrection of the PDS is, as Haggard and Noland maintain,
"being used as a tool of control, with favored state employees provided with
enhanced access to food in preference to the vulnerable populations targeted by
the WFP?" [113] In a volatile and murky market economy, it can be difficult to
distinguish between government interventions to correct market inequalities and
those designed to reallocate resources for political reasons.
Two problems with subsidized food are the opportunity for arbitrage and the
difficulty of ensuring that, as with food aid, the most vulnerable get what
they need. There is no formal means of testing in the DPRK. However, given some
of the most recent reports out of North Korea, the resumption of the PDS system
has had various effects in different parts of the country, with some markets
strictly controlled to prevent the sale of grain and others not controlled at
all. [114]
The government attempt to revive the PDS has so far been unsuccessful. The
World Food Program reported that as of November 2005, recipients were not
getting the target ration of 500 grams. [115] PDS distributions in most areas,
according to Good Friends, dwindled to nothing by the end of 2005 and had
stopped in Pyongyang too by May 2006. [116] Moreover, rice is apparently sold
from private homes and by way of middlemen known as doeguri.
Here again, political markers of status (ie, party affiliation) are gradually
giving way to economic markers of status (possession of hard currency).
Sometimes these markers overlap; often they do not. Those with little market
power, however, are liable to slip through an already-flimsy social safety net.
The new, smaller WFP development program can only target a portion of the
individuals who lack market access.
Ultimately, though, whether the zig-zags of North Korea's economic reforms
reflect good or bad policy decisions, the point is that they are policy. In the
main, Pyongyang's changes do not appear to be designed to undercut the right to
food. Most reforms have been intended to increase the amount of available food
grown domestically, and the revival of the PDS attempted to address the problem
of distribution.
Should North Korea direct state policy toward higher-value-added agricultural
production coupled with increased imports of staples? Perhaps. That it hasn't
followed this oft-repeated advice, however, speaks more to its sovereign
stubbornness - and its reluctance to jeopardize the one-third of its population
living in the countryside - than to any deliberate abuse of human rights.
Notes
[99] Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, "Noland and Haggard Defend Food Aid
Report," CanKor, September 8, 2005; Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Persistence of
North Korea," Policy Review, October 2004.
[100] UNDP, Human Development Report 2000.
[101] The consolidation of agricultural lands - "reprofiling" - alone boosts
the amount of arable land by 10%. Alexander Vorontsov, "North Korea During the
Process of Change," Joint US-Korea Academic Studies, vol 16, page 149. [102] A
system that gives the work team even greater control than the farm manager
presages the same kind of privatization that took place in China in the 1980s.
See Tae-Jin Kwon, "Agricultural Policies Under Reform in the DPRK," IFES Forum,
July 13, 2005.
[103] Central Bureau of Statistics, "DPRK 2004 Nutrition Assessment." [104]
Interview with Erica Kang, December 7, 2005.
[105] Good Friends, North Korean Human Rights and the Food Crisis, page
37.
[106] Interview with aid worker, December 9, 2005.
[107] Ruediger Frank, "Response by Ruediger Frank," NAPSNET. September 13,
2005.
[108] Interview with Ruediger Frank, December 4, 2005.
[108] Natsios, The Politics of Famine in North Korea.
[110] Smith, Hungry for Peace, page 82.
[111] In 2000, according to World Food Program data, NGOs sold 26% of their aid
on the market in recipient countries. For bilateral assistance, the number was
considerably higher: 73% (Barrett and Maxwell, Food Aid After Fifty Years,
page 15) .
[112] Interview with Marcus Noland, February 13, 2006.
[113] Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, "Noland and Haggard Defend Food Aid
Report."
[114] Good Friends, North Korea Today, Issue 12, 2006, pages 1-2.
[115] World Food Program Emergency Report, November 25, 2005.
[116] Good Friends, North Korea Today, Issue 18 (2006).
Tomorrow,Part 4: Polict implications
John Feffer is the co-director of FPIF.
This series of articles was produced under the auspices of a research project
sponsored by the Sejong Institute. It will be published in book form this year.
