I don't quite know the intricacies of the situation but it's funny how a 'socialist' nation is still engaging in discriminatory behaviors.
The famine was not the result of a few years of bad weather and harvests. Rather, it was the culmination of a long series of poor government decisions that accrued slowly over decades. Indeed, most North Koreans had experienced nutritional deprivation long before the mid-1990s. Haggard and Noland situate the famine and its effects within this larger structural story, which begins with a centrally planned economic system that overproduced food, had long ago reached the limits of its productive capacity, and could not respond effectively to exogenous shocks. Following the work of Amartya Sen, Haggard and Noland view famines not simply as the result of poor harvests, but rather as distributional and political tragedies given that modern countries have a range of ways to produce, import, and procure food.22 The problem was not only a lack of food, but also discrimination against certain regions, which received smaller proportional shares of the available food. Combined with a loss of ªnancial and economic support from China and the Soviet Union, the food situation was fragile even before the bad weather of the 1990s. Yet Haggard and Noland emphasize human agency and avoidable mistakes. They write, “North Korea did experience severe ºoods in 1995 and a succession of natural disasters thereafter as well. But the country’s vulnerability to those conditions was exacerbated at every point by decisions the government made that compounded risk” (p. 24). A key set of avoidable mistakes was the government’s unwillingness to engage in economic or policy behavior that could have alleviated some of the difficulty. Most significant was the regime’s refusal to pursue policies that would have allowed food imports and distribution without discrimination to all regions of the country. The famine thus came about gradually over the years.
By attempting to follow a closed-economy model, the regime abandoned the possibility of engaging in international markets and importing food, choosing instead to restrict demand (e.g., the “Let’s eat two meals a day” campaign of 1991). Exceedingly cautious attempts to increase exports and earn foreign exchange in the 1990s were unsuccessful—the Najin Sonbong free trade zone, created in 1991, was located in the most isolated part of North Korea and lacked a clear legal foundation for international business. Borrowing from abroad to ªnance food imports was another short-term option, but as Haggard and Noland write, “North Korea had thoroughly burned its bridges in this regard,” having defaulted on foreign loans in the 1970s (p. 29). Furthermore, the government resisted asking for foreign aid for as long as possible, succumbing only when the situation had become so dire that there was virtually no alternative. Even today, North Korea and foreign aid donors engage in a bargaining game, where the government tries to control and divert as much aid as possible for its own ends, and the donors attempt to help the most needy North Korean citizens and reduce or avoid governmental intrusion.
The famine was not the result of a few years of bad weather and harvests. Rather, it was the culmination of a long series of poor government decisions that accrued slowly over decades. Indeed, most North Koreans had experienced nutritional deprivation long before the mid-1990s. Haggard and Noland situate the famine and its effects within this larger structural story, which begins with a centrally planned economic system that overproduced food, had long ago reached the limits of its productive capacity, and could not respond effectively to exogenous shocks. Following the work of Amartya Sen, Haggard and Noland view famines not simply as the result of poor harvests, but rather as distributional and political tragedies given that modern countries have a range of ways to produce, import, and procure food.22 The problem was not only a lack of food, but also discrimination against certain regions, which received smaller proportional shares of the available food. Combined with a loss of ªnancial and economic support from China and the Soviet Union, the food situation was fragile even before the bad weather of the 1990s. Yet Haggard and Noland emphasize human agency and avoidable mistakes. They write, “North Korea did experience severe ºoods in 1995 and a succession of natural disasters thereafter as well. But the country’s vulnerability to those conditions was exacerbated at every point by decisions the government made that compounded risk” (p. 24). A key set of avoidable mistakes was the government’s unwillingness to engage in economic or policy behavior that could have alleviated some of the difficulty. Most significant was the regime’s refusal to pursue policies that would have allowed food imports and distribution without discrimination to all regions of the country. The famine thus came about gradually over the years.
By attempting to follow a closed-economy model, the regime abandoned the possibility of engaging in international markets and importing food, choosing instead to restrict demand (e.g., the “Let’s eat two meals a day” campaign of 1991). Exceedingly cautious attempts to increase exports and earn foreign exchange in the 1990s were unsuccessful—the Najin Sonbong free trade zone, created in 1991, was located in the most isolated part of North Korea and lacked a clear legal foundation for international business. Borrowing from abroad to ªnance food imports was another short-term option, but as Haggard and Noland write, “North Korea had thoroughly burned its bridges in this regard,” having defaulted on foreign loans in the 1970s (p. 29). Furthermore, the government resisted asking for foreign aid for as long as possible, succumbing only when the situation had become so dire that there was virtually no alternative. Even today, North Korea and foreign aid donors engage in a bargaining game, where the government tries to control and divert as much aid as possible for its own ends, and the donors attempt to help the most needy North Korean citizens and reduce or avoid governmental intrusion.
