[ad_1]
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has warned of food shortages and urged officials to boost agricultural production as the country fights pandemic-related border closures, crippling economic sanctions and a series of typhoons and floods.
Kim told senior officials that “people’s food situation is straining,” and blamed typhoon damage last year for grain yield deficits, according to media reports on Wednesday. state. He also warned of a “prolonged emergency anti-epidemic situation.”
The comments, made when the 37-year-old dictator chaired the central committee of the Pyongyang government’s Workers’ Party, are the latest indication of the tensions in the North Korean economy.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea has was cut of the outside world. Shipments – believed to be imports of food, fertilizers and fuels – from China, the country main business partner, have continued at a very slow pace, but most cross-border trade activities have fallen sharply or it stopped completely.
Statistics on the secret state they are difficult to obtain and often unreliable. However, Peter Ward, a Seoul-based expert from the University of Vienna who monitors the North Korean economy, noted reports of “unprecedented” price increases for commodities such as wheat. corn and rice in recent weeks.
“People who will really suffer are people who don’t have a political voice, people outside of Pyongyang, especially in smaller cities,” Ward said. “They will be badly hurt by serious changes in food prices.”
Exacerbating the bleak outlook, it appears that Pyongyang, which continues to claim zero cases of coronavirus, has taken ultra-prudent approach to accept foreign offers of vaccines or food aid.
Critics have noted that instead of receiving international aid, Kim has continued to do so develop nuclear weapons while wife juche, the ideology of self-sufficiency of the pariah state.
Rachel Lee, a former North Korean U.S. government analyst who now has 38 North at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank, said Kim could also be recognizing food shortages “breaking the whip in the agricultural sector to increase production” and justify self-sufficiency.
“North Korea considers the coronavirus situation to be long-term and will therefore continue to intensify economic and ideological campaigns,” he said.
[ad_2]
Source link
