North Korea tells hungry citizens to ‘tighten belts’ until 2025

Radio Free Asia

North Korea is telling citizens to tighten their belts through at least 2025, when the nation will reopen its border with China after closing it in 2020 to ward off the coronavirus, causing severe food shortages, according to sources in the country.

After the government informed citizens to expect more years of hardship, people complained that they might not be able to last through the coming winter — much less hold out through the middle of the decade.

“Two weeks ago, they told the neighborhood watch unit meeting that our food emergency would continue until 2025. Authorities emphasized that the possibility of reopening customs between North Korea and China before 2025 was very slim,” a resident of the northwestern border city of Sinuiju, across from China’s Dandong, said in late October 2021.

“The food situation right now is already clearly an emergency, and the people are struggling with shortages. When the authorities tell them that they need to conserve and consume less food until 2025, … they can do nothing but feel great despair,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Chronically short of food, the country of 25 million has seen starvation deaths in the wake of the closure of the Sino-Korean border and suspension of trade with China in January 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The move devastated the North Korean economy, causing food prices to skyrocket without imports from China covering the gap between domestic food production and demand.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization projected in a recent report that North Korea would be short about 860,000 tons of food in 2021, about two months’ worth of consumption. The U.N. World Food Programme estimates that about 40% of North Korea’s population is undernourished.

North Korea faulted factors such as international sanctions and natural disasters for its inability to achieve food self-sufficiency and other sustainable development goals in a recent Voluntary National Review for the U.N.

Though U.N. and United States sanctions restrict the trade of certain goods that could generate cash and resources for Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, the border closure restricts all trade, and it has made finding their next meal difficult for many North Koreans.

“Distrust and resentment of the authorities is rampant among the residents because at the meeting they said we should reduce the amount of food we eat and tighten our belts more than ever,” the Sinuiju resident said.

“Some of the residents are saying that the situation right now is so serious they don’t know if they can even survive the coming winter. They say that telling us to endure hardship until 2025 is the same as telling us to starve to death,” the source said.

When the same bleak message was delivered to residents of Hoeryong, the northeastern border city of 150,000 people, officials tried to spin it as the country’s successful management of the pandemic.

“They said at the meeting that the coronavirus situation in other countries was so bad,” said another source, who also requested anonymity.

“But the residents do not trust the authorities’ explanation, saying, ‘No matter how difficult the situation is, where on Earth could there be people going through more difficulty than we are?’” the source said.

The people criticize the regime for doing nothing to solve the food crisis and worry that the border will remain closed even if they are dying of starvation. “Criticism is coming out that the government’s emphasis on saving food might be because the supreme leader Kim Jong Un is not aware of how serious the food situation is,” the second source said.

“Residents are already struggling to get by and have already tightened their belts as much as possible. They resent the unrealistic demands of the authorities, asking how much tighter they could possibly tighten their belts,” the source said.

The North Korean regime has been pushing its mantra of self-reliance since the beginning of 2021. One of Kim’s key messages at the ruling Korean Workers’ Party congress in January was for the country to decrease dependence on imports and solve its own problems.

In April, authorities told citizens to prepare for an economic situation worse than the Arduous March, the Korean name for the 1994-98 famine that killed millions — as much as 10% of the country by some estimates.

In July, the party’s Central Committee ordered citizens to start farming their own food in anticipation of a shortage that could last three years. (Pictured: North Korean farmers plant rice in Pyongyang in August 2021 as the country’s food shortage worsened.) Sources said that citizens were resentful because the party was shirking its responsibilities, simply telling people that they were on their own to feed themselves without doing anything to solve the problem.

IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS