Analysis-COVID crisis could deepen N.Korea food shortages amid drought warnings

By Hyonhee Shin and Soo-hyang Choi

SEOUL – North Korea’s coronavirus outbreak threatens to deepen its already dire meals scenario this yr, as a nationwide lockdown would hamper ongoing anti-drought efforts and the mobilisation of labour, analysts mentioned.

The remoted North confirmed on Thursday its first COVID-19 outbreak for the reason that pandemic emerged greater than two years in the past, declaring the “gravest nationwide emergency” and imposing a nationwide lockdown.

The outbreak got here because the nation steps up an “all-out combat” towards drought, with chief Kim Jong Un warning of a tense meals scenario as a result of pandemic and final yr’s typhoons.

State media mentioned final week that manufacturing unit labourers and even workplace employees and authorities officers had been dispatched to assist enhance farming amenities and safe water sources throughout the nation.

Droughts and flooding have lengthy posed seasonal threats to North Korea, and any main pure hazards might additional cripple its reclusive financial system.

The pandemic had already slashed commerce and worldwide meals donations, and in a rustic closely reliant on human labour in agriculture and missing industrial and medical infrastructure, a brewing COVID-19 disaster might additional exacerbate meals shortages, analysts mentioned.

“In North Korea, financial exercise requires lots of people’s actions, and you may’t count on commerce or giant support from China,” mentioned Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean research at Kyungnam College in South Korea.

“However now farming exercise may very well be scaled again and distribution of fertilisers, uncooked supplies and gear would turn out to be tough,” he added.

U.N. support businesses and most different reduction teams have pulled in a foreign country amid prolonged border shutdowns and say it's tough to gauge precisely how dangerous the scenario is there.

However Ji Seong-ho, a South Korean lawmaker who defected from the North in 2006 and has campaigned for North Koreans’ human rights, mentioned the virus might unfold quickly due partly to the dearth of a working medical system.

“The COVID outbreak might hit the continued farming season laborious, and meals safety may turn out to be actually severe this yr and subsequent,” he advised a parliamentary session.

Worldwide sanctions over the North’s weapons programmes limit broad swaths of its commerce, and the nation sealed its border in early 2020 to forestall the virus.

A reopening of border commerce early this yr raised a glimmer of hope, solely to be halted in April due to COVID outbreaks in China, which has lately imposed extraordinarily tight restrictions in main cities like Shanghai. Satellite tv for pc imagery reveals items sitting for weeks or months in quarantine at land and sea port amenities.

Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Sejong Institute’s North Korea research centre in South Korea, mentioned the North might impose restricted measures – not like China’s sweeping strikes – to make sure some exercise continues, referring to Kim’s order to maintain the lockdowns to the town and county ranges.

“However over time, the dearth of interregional motion would harm provide and manufacturing, and North Korea may ultimately face a severe meals disaster and the form of nice confusion that’s been seen in China lately,” Cheong mentioned.

North Korea’s climate company has warned of extended dry spells this month, and state media once more on Thursday reported an “all-out combat towards drought” nationwide.

In March, the United Nations urged Pyongyang to reopen its borders to help employees and meals imports, saying its deepening isolation could have left many dealing with hunger.

The World Meals Program estimated that even earlier than the pandemic emerged, 11 million folks, or greater than 40% of the North’s inhabitants, had been undernourished and wanted help.