The Impact of UNSC Sanctions on Food Security in the DPRK

doi:10.1017/9781108915632.004

2 - The Impact of UNSC Sanctions on Food Security in the DPRK

from Part I - Humanitarian Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2025

Hazel Smith

Edited by

Joy Gordon

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Joy Gordon: Affiliation:
Loyola University, Chicago

Book contents

Summary

In 2018, domestic food production plummeted in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea, DPRK) and has not recovered. United Nations agencies reported that the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) were consequential in the decrease in food production. What has been little reported, however, is the scale of damage to the DPRK food economy from sanctions. The vast majority of the population of 26 million rely on domestic food production to survive. Imports of vehicles, including tractors, spare parts, irrigation equipment, and all technology essential for producing food are banned by the expanded UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017. Oil imports, necessary for crucial aspects of food production (the DPRK is not an oil-producer), from transport to fertilizer production, are capped at an annual amount lower than the amount that South Korea consumes in one day. Without these essential inputs, domestic food production cannot recover. This was not a new scenario for North Koreans. The abrupt end of subsidized trade from Russia, Eastern Europe, and China at the end of the Cold War provided the proximate cause of the famine of the 1990s that had killed up to half a million people. The UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017 reproduced the conditions that generated famine in the 1990s.

Keywords

child starvation food security humanitarian exceptions North Korea (DPRK)sanctions impact United Nations Security Council (UNSC)

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad
Legitimacy, Accountability, and Humanitarian Consequences
, pp. 33 - 56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108915632.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025
Creative Commons: This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

2 The Impact of UNSC Sanctions on Food Security in the DPRK

The UNSC imposed sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, commonly known as North Korea) in response to its nuclear tests of 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017, and missile development program.Footnote ¹ Initially, economic sanctions targeted individuals and institutions associated with the military, defense, and nuclear sectors. In 2016 and 2017, however, the UN expanded sanctions so they no longer distinguished between the civilian and military economy; they did not exclude food production or the health and education sectors from their remit.Footnote ² The misleadingly termed “humanitarian exceptions” provisions of the sanctions resolutions were not designed to protect the population of 26 million people from the impact of sanctions. The provisions in this regard were restricted to providing a bureaucratic channel through which international humanitarian agencies could filter applications for activities in North Korea. The stringent and time-consuming process, requiring written justification – for example, for every item that contained metal, including every screw and nail – served to further limit what was already, by the mid 2010s, in both absolute and relative terms, a tiny international aid program.Footnote ³ The “humanitarian exceptions” were updated in 2023 after humanitarian organizations had repeatedly complained about the unprecedented restrictive provisions that prevented the provision of aid to attested vulnerable groups in need. The amended version did not, however, repeal the administrative provisions that meant every agency had to argue in writing for why each and every component of a prospective aid project that included metals, that is to say, every box of nails, every screw, every blood pressure monitor, and so on should be exempt from the sanctions.Footnote ⁴ In terms of meeting objectives, the expansion of UN sanctions to the civilian sector did not end the nuclear and missile program, which in fact accelerated.Footnote ⁵

In 2020, as a Covid-19 pandemic prevention measure, the DPRK government closed its border with China, via which the DPRK conducts almost all its trade. Border closures were not causative of food shortages, but they narrowed the mitigation measures available to the government and the population. They inhibited trade, especially imports, and shuttered the gray area trade which, since the late 1990s, had fueled North Korea’s burgeoning marketization and provided an income and food safety net for the population. Border closures also prevented international officials from carrying out the in-country food security surveys and analyses that had been a feature of UN activity in the DPRK since the mid 1990s.Footnote ⁶

Fortunately, lack of access to the country does not mean that we must resort to speculation to evaluate the extent and impact of reduced food availability on the North Korean population. Since the border closures, both the FAO,Footnote ⁷ and South Korea’s respected South Korea’s Rural Development Administration (RDA) continued to produce food supply analyses based on historic data, government supplied information, remote sensing, satellite data, weather pattern analysis, and sophisticated modeling techniques.Footnote ⁸ Standardized international methodologies provide reliable, detailed, and disaggregated crop production data. Demand data is also not difficult to calculate as it derives from a simple multiplication of the population number by a minimum calorific requirement for survival. That is then translated into how much basic grain, the cheapest food, is required to fulfil those basic needs. In North Korea it amounts to around 5.5–6 million metric tons of grain per year.Footnote ⁹

In 2018, domestic food production plummeted and had not recovered by 2022.Footnote ¹⁰ UN agencies, including the FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP), reported that UN sanctions were consequential in the decrease in food production.Footnote ¹¹ What has been little reported, however, is the scale of damage to the DPRK food economy from sanctions. The vast majority of the population of 26 million rely on domestic food production to survive. Without access to essential agro-industrial imports, including oil, fertilizer, and technology, domestic food production cannot recover. This was not a new scenario for North Korea. In the 1990s, Russia and China started to charge market prices for these exports to North Korea. The subsequent decrease in imported inputs was the proximate cause of a rapid fall in domestic food production that resulted in a famine that killed around half a million people.Footnote ¹² The UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017 reproduced the conditions that had generated famine in the 1990s.Footnote ¹³

“The Most Comprehensive, Legally-Binding, Sanctions Program Imposed against a State since Iraq in the 1990s”

Between 2006 and 2016, UN sanctions on North Korea were in line with UN policy of targeted measures, aimed at the military and defense sectors and government institutions tied to the nuclear and missile program. After research that found comprehensive sanctions had contributed – in Iraq (1990–2003) and Haiti (1993–1994) – to increased levels of child malnutrition and child mortality, UN decision-makers had since the early 2000s eschewed the use of comprehensive sanctions in favor of targeted or “smart” sanctions.Footnote ¹⁴ The UN DPRK resolutions of 2016 and 2017, however, expanded sanctions to no longer differentiate between the military and civilian sector economies.Footnote ¹⁵ According to one international legal analyst, even before the implementation of further expansion of the DPRK sanctions regime in 2017, the 2016 UNSC resolutions “created the most comprehensive, legally-binding, sanctions program imposed against a state since Iraq in the 1990s.”Footnote ¹⁶ The DPRK resolutions of 2016 and 2017 marked not just the intensification of sanctions on one country but also a major shift in UN global policy.

A Total Blockade

In 2016, the Obama administration initiated UNSC Resolution 2270. The resolution introduced export bans on coal, iron, iron ore, gold, and rare earth minerals but permitted “livelihood” exemptions. There was a recognition that at least some of these exports could legitimately be understood as part of a civilian sector economy and that hardship was likely if these export activities were completely curtailed.Footnote ¹⁷ In 2017, a Trump administration initiative eradicated such exemptions, irrespective of whether production was part of the civilian or military economy.Footnote ¹⁸ Sanctions severely restricted DPRK shipping, forbade DPRK joint ventures with overseas firms, prevented North Koreans working abroad, and stopped DPRK use of foreign banks.Footnote ¹⁹ Expanded sanctions aimed to shutter the entire economy, not just its military components.

One goal was to ban all DPRK exports. According to the U.S. Department of State, “over 90% of North Korea’s publicly reported exports of $2.7 billion” had been banned by December 2017.Footnote ²⁰ The December 2017 resolution targeted “North Korea’s last remaining exports.”Footnote ²¹ These included the “DPRK’s export of food and agricultural products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone including magnesite and magnesia, wood and vessels … [The resolution] also prohibits the DPRK from selling or transferring fishing rights.”Footnote ²²

Import bans and restrictions followed a similarly expansive path. The December 2017 resolution banned “the supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK of all industrial machinery, transportation vehicles, iron, steel and other metals with the exception of spare parts to maintain DPRK commercial civilian passenger aircraft currently in use.”Footnote ²³ These were total bans; with the exception of support for North Korea’s Air Koryo national airline, all imports of spare parts, metals, and anything containing metals were now illegal. The US government clarified that expanded sanctions forbade the export to the DPRK of “all transportation vehicles (including motor vehicles, trucks, trains, ships, aircraft, helicopters) and industrial machinery.”Footnote ²⁴ The 2017 sanctions also banned the import into North Korea of natural gas and condensates and imposed quantitative caps on oil imports.Footnote ²⁵

Following the implementation of expanded sanctions, North Korea’s global trade diminished sharply. Research from South Korea’s premier economic research institutions differ slightly on the actual figures, but coincide on the scale and rapidity of the downward trend between 2017 and 2021 and the small-scale uptick in 2022. An early study from the South Korean government economics think tank, the Korea Development Institute (KDI), reported that DPRK exports to China, with which it conducted almost all its trade, fell from $2.6 billion in 2016 to $50 million in 2020.Footnote ²⁶ Imports from China over the same period fell from an already low level of $3.2 billion to $491 million.Footnote ²⁷ In 2020, therefore, total trade with China amounted to $541 million.Footnote ²⁸ A later report from the (South) Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) reported a slightly higher total for North Korea’s total trade with China for 2020 at around $760 million.Footnote ²⁹ KOTRA reported that North Korea–China trade had fallen 10.4 percent in 2021 compared to 2020, resulting in a total of $682 million for 2021.Footnote ³⁰ North Korea–China trade rose to $1.53 billion in 2022, reflecting the easing of Covid-19 restrictions on the North Korea–China border.Footnote ³¹ The 2022 uptick, however, still brought total trade between the two countries to less than 60 percent of what it had been in 2016.

The Impact of Sanctions on the DPRK Food Economy

The main impact of sanctions on the food economy was in the domestic food production sector. Food exports to North Korea were not directly prohibited, but were made more difficult as, among other things, ships and vehicles necessary to transport food and the machinery to unload food were sanctioned. Diminished export earnings also reduced the capacity to purchase food imports.Footnote ³²

In North Korea, the agricultural sector is more or less synonymous with food production, unlike the US, for instance, where nonfood crops like cotton are important components of agricultural production. North Korean food production had always been import-dependent.Footnote ³³ The DPRK does not produce natural gas nor oil. Natural gas is a crucial component in the production of nitrogen, which is in turn an essential component of fertilizer.Footnote ³⁴ Oil and refined oil products like diesel and kerosene are essential non-substitutable commodities in food production, not just in North Korea but everywhere in the world.Footnote ³⁵ Oil products fuel agricultural and irrigation machinery, crop drying and storage facilities, provide the means to transport crops, seeds, food and labor, and comprise a necessary component of fertilizer and agricultural chemical production. North Korean farmers were therefore dependent on adequate oil imports as well as imported technology.

The U.S. Department of State reported that prior to the 2017 sanctions, North Korea was receiving 4 million barrels of crude oil and 4.5 million barrels in refined petroleum imports per annum. The December 2017 resolution capped crude oil imports at 4 million barrels per year and refined petroleum imports at 0.5 million barrels a year.Footnote ³⁶ Even prior to oil sanctions, these were already low import levels in world terms and compared to the needs of the economy. The sheer scale of oil poverty in North Korea can perhaps best be illustrated by a comparison with its rich and successful neighbor. In 2021, the annual cap on DPRK refined petroleum product imports was equivalent to less than a fifth of one day’s consumption of those same products in South Korea.Footnote ³⁷

Even before the expansion of sanctions, domestic manufacturing could not provide adequate substitutes, in quantity or quality, for the imported goods required by North Korea’s farming sector, including farm and irrigation equipment, and vehicles, including basic level tractors and trailers. After the expansion of sanctions, domestic agro-industrial manufacturing capacity was further handicapped, as North Korea was no longer allowed to import equipment, spare parts and vehicles, and anything with a metal component, like screws, nails, and hammers, because of the outright UN ban on exports of all these items.

In 2021, agriculture comprised about 23.8 percent of DPRK GDP, up from about 22.4 percent in 2020.Footnote ³⁸ If agro-industries like food processing, the production of fertilizer, agricultural chemicals, spare parts and machinery, as well as transportation are included, the proportion of GDP constituted by the food economy overall increases to probably around a third of DPRK GDP. While direct data is not available, given that all sectors of the food economy rely on banned imports including machinery, spare parts, and vehicles, as well as the heavily restricted oil and oil product imports, and given that the food economy is not exempt from sanctions, it would be defying logic if the food economy had not been negatively impacted by expanded UN sanctions.

The Collapse of Domestic Food Production

The main source of food for North Koreans is domestic production, not imports. Household food security depends, therefore, on the maintenance of enough domestic grain production to meet the nutritional requirements of the 26 million population for physical survival. Food imports provide a secondary source of supply. The exception was in the immediate post-famine years of the very early 2000s, when humanitarian food aid (free food imports) filled the food gap. Between 2008 and 2016, domestic food production recovered, to achieve around 5 million metric tons a year. This had left the DPRK with a manageable grain import requirement of around 0.5 million metric tons, which was procured on both concessional (food assistance) and commercial terms (food purchases).Footnote ³⁹

In 2017, domestic food production fell to 4.72 million metric tons, leaving what was seen at the time as an alarmingly high import requirement, of 802,000 metric tons.Footnote ⁴⁰ In 2018, after the implementation of Resolutions 2371 (August 2017), 2375 (September 2017), and 2397 (December 2017), domestic food production fell substantially again, to just under 4.2 million metric tons.Footnote ⁴¹ To cover basic needs, 5.75 million metric tons of food needed to be produced in 2018 for consumption in 2019. The 2019 food import requirement therefore rose by an enormous 1.55 million metric tons.Footnote ⁴²

Figure 2.1 indicates the existence of a systemic food crisis between 2017 and 2020, with commercial food imports unable to fill persistently high food gaps.Footnote ⁴³

Line graph from 2015 to 2020 showing food deficit rising from 694 to 1500 thousand metric tons with a peak at 1585. Commercial food imports increase steadily from 100 to 353, while food aid remains low and stable around 21 to 28.

Figure 2.1 Food import requirements (deficit), commercial food imports, and food aid, 2015/2016 to 2019/2020 (in 1,000 metric tons).

1. Grain deficit data from the FAO for 2015–2018. RDA data is used for 2019/2020 because, although the FAO published government figures for 2019/2020 figures, the FAO never confirmed their accuracy.Footnote ⁴⁴
2. FAO marketing year data runs from November to October. The main crop produced in, for example, 2018, is consumed in the following year, that is, 2019. By contrast, U.S. Department of Agriculture reporting uses calendar years. The Department of Agriculture reported crop production attributed to a calendar year is, however, identical to FAO marketing year totals.
3. Commercial food import and food aid data is from U.S. Department of Agriculture. Commercial food import data, 2019, from China is only for the period January–September 2019; from other countries it is for the period January–October 2019. U.S. Department of Agriculture food aid data for 2019 is for January–October 2019.

The food import requirement has remained high, at over a million metric tons in each of the years 2020, 2021, and 2022.Footnote ⁴⁵ One million metric tons is a very large amount of food; it is sufficient to feed 8 million people at a basic calorie intake of around 1,640 calories a day for an entire year.Footnote ⁴⁶ Such a large food deficit is far too big to be filled by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The UN WFP and/or countries with very large cereal surpluses, like China or the USA, could potentially fill this level of food gap, but to do so would entail very large commitments and large-scale operations. To put the numbers in perspective, the 2018 grain deficit of 1.5 million metric tons was equivalent to approximately two-thirds of the US’s annual food aid donations for the entire world.Footnote ⁴⁷ Not only was the volume of grain required to fill North Korea’s food gap exceptionally high but the cost was also prohibitive. As an indication, USAID reported that in 2019 it paid $2.3 billion for 1.7 million metric tons of food aid.Footnote ⁴⁸

Food Imports and Stocks: Unable to Fill the Food Gap

Official and gray area food import availability was constrained by trade sanctions and, after 2020, the Covid-19 border closures which, among other things, limited the possibilities of illicit cross border trade.Footnote ⁴⁹ DPRK imports from China, including food imports, are difficult to evaluate accurately, partly because border trade is sometimes unrecorded.Footnote ⁵⁰ UPI reported that in 2019, the Chinese government donated 1 million metric tons of rice and corn to the DPRK.Footnote ⁵¹ KDI reporting drawing on Chinese trade statistics shows a smaller import volume in 2019, of around 410,000 metric tons, comprised of wheat flour, rice, and corn from China.Footnote ⁵² In 2019, therefore, even if Chinese food aid did not amount to a million metric tons, recorded Chinese food imports were probably large enough to have helped to avert famine. In 2019, although the FAO reported that national food stocks were zero, given the then access to informal market channels before the government closed the border in 2020, some households would likely have accrued personal food stocks.Footnote ⁵³ In 2020, food production shortfalls may also have been mitigated by substantial food imports from China.Footnote ⁵⁴

In 2021, there were no recorded corn and rice imports from China and non-grain food imports were reduced to tiny amounts.Footnote ⁵⁵ This is not surprising, as throughout 2021, rail connections remained closed and shipping was curtailed while both the Chinese and North Korean governments battled to control the spread of Covid-19. Rail and freight links between the two countries were slowly reopened from September 2022 but not fully normalized even by February 2023.Footnote ⁵⁶ In July 2023, the South Korean Minister of Unification, Kwon Young-se, reported an increase in food imports from China into North Korea, but stated that these had not been sufficient to prevent deaths from starvation amid a deteriorating “grave” and “serious” food crisis in North Korea.Footnote ⁵⁷

Sanctions and the Impact on Child Nutrition

In 2019, an FAO in-country assessment, based on household survey data, reported geographically widespread deteriorating food access; North Korean households faced “an overall alarming situation.”Footnote ⁵⁸ These conclusions were disturbing in themselves, but they also reflected a major negative shift in trends in child nutrition. Between 1998 and 2017, the nutritional status of North Korean children and adults had improved substantially, to the extent that from the mid 2000s, no international aid organization considered the DPRK to be facing a humanitarian food emergency.Footnote ⁵⁹ Post-famine nutritional improvements had been a result of the recovery of domestic food production, the growth of gray-area marketization, and a modest economic stabilization, at least until 2016.Footnote ⁶⁰ Child nutritional improvements had taken place in every province, although the aggregate figures masked differentials between rural and urban areas, with the former much worse off than the latter.Footnote ⁶¹ Not surprisingly, malnutrition figures in the capital, Pyongyang, remained lower than in other provinces.Footnote ⁶²

Tables 2.1 and 2.2 demonstrate the large scale of improvements in chronic and acute child malnutrition between 1998 and 2017. Stunting, a sign of chronic malnutrition, decreased from 64 percent to 19 percent between 1998 and 2017. In the same period, wasting, an indication of severe malnutrition that without medical intervention is likely to be fatal, decreased from 21 percent to 2.5 percent.

Table 2.1Child malnutrition in North Korea, 1998–2017
Year	Stunting Height/Age (%)	Wasting Weight/Height (%)
1998	64	21
2000	51	12
2002	45	9
2004	43	8.5
2009	32	5
2012	28	4
2017	19	2.5

Source: This table was first published in Smith, “Return of Famine?” 260. Compiled from UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank (2021). Global Expanded Database Wasting (Survey Estimates, National and Disaggregated), April 2021; Global Expanded Database Stunting (Survey Estimates, National and Disaggregated), April 2021, both accessed December 8, 2024, https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/malnutrition/.

Table 2.2Child malnutrition in North Korea and selected Asian countries
	YearFootnote ^a	Stunting Height/Age (%)	Wasting Weight/Height (%)
North Korea	2017	19	2.5
India	2017	35	17
Nepal	2019	31.5	12
Pakistan	2018	38	7
Philippines	2018	30	6

Note:

^a Reporting year is the most recent available.

Source: This table was first published in Smith, “Return of Famine?” 260. Compiled from UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank (2021). Global Expanded Database Wasting; Global Expanded Database Stunting.

What is also notable was the scale of improvement in nutritional status of North Korea’s children in comparison to some other countries in Asia. Table 2.2 shows that by 2017, the nutritional status of North Korean children had improved to such an extent that it was, on average, better than for children living in India and other middle-income Asian countries.

In 2019, the FAO reported that “the food security situation is clearly worsening … with poor food consumption rising and acceptable consumption diminishing.”Footnote ⁶³ In 2019, UNICEF also reported that over half of children under two did not have adequate diets in terms of access to diverse food groups, including meat, eggs, fruit and vegetables.Footnote ⁶⁴ Over two-thirds of children did not receive what UNICEF classed as a minimum acceptable diet – calculated as a matrix of amount and type of food eaten by the child.Footnote ⁶⁵

Families coped with food shortages by spending savings, borrowing money, bartering and selling household goods, and sending children to eat at relatives’ homes or in public institutions.Footnote ⁶⁶ Households reported reducing the number of meals, restricting adult intake and portion sizes so children could eat, and borrowing food from neighbors.Footnote ⁶⁷ These coping methods were not elastic. In a contracting economy, savings become depleted, debts need to be paid with interest, household goods are finite, and relatives and public institutions have reduced capacity to feed extra mouths. By 2023, given continued food shortages and that the DPRK economy is in a sixth year of recession, it is likely that these coping methods have been exhausted.Footnote ⁶⁸ In the absence of reporting from international officials in the DPRK, the outside world has had to rely on clandestine reporting from within the DPRK.Footnote ⁶⁹ Since 2019, these outlets have consistently and repeatedly reported instances of starvation.Footnote ⁷⁰

Not every population group suffers equally in periods of food shortage and famine. In 2022, the most vulnerable in North Korea included those who have the least ability to help themselves, including the 3.5 million people over the age of sixty and the 2 million children under the age of five.Footnote ⁷¹ Those who rely completely on government-provided food are the worst off. They include those without family support and living in residential institutions, for example the elderly, people with disabilities, and children.Footnote ⁷² North Korea’s vulnerable population also includes an estimated 150,000–200,000 prisoners and the 700,000 young conscript soldiers living away from home in military camps.Footnote ⁷³ While little direct data is available, it would defy logic if malnutrition had not worsened and child mortality had not risen.

Government Food Security Policies

The major problem with DPRK food policy was that it was founded on the denial of reality; especially that of systemic import dependence. The policy of food self-sufficiency was not of itself strategically illogical or physically unattainable, although it can be criticized as economically suboptimal.Footnote ⁷⁴ It is entirely possible to increase yields in the DPRK to achieve food self-sufficiency, given access to sufficient inputs, including fertilizer, chemicals, modern irrigation and agricultural machinery, and sufficient energy supplies. Nor is it uncommon for countries to regard food (and energy) supply as a strategic good and aim for self-sufficiency as a response to security priorities. As UN sanctions intensified, however, the DPRK government insisted that self-sufficiency was not a goal but was reality; the message was that the DPRK could resist any and all economic pressures from abroad as the entire economy met all its needs from domestic resources.Footnote ⁷⁵

In 2021, the DPRK government had publicly recognized an ongoing food crisis. In April 2021, the North Korea leader, Kim Jong Un, in a speech to the Sixth Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers’ Party, reminded Party workers that they faced “another more difficult ‘Arduous March.’”Footnote ⁷⁶ In the DPRK, the term “arduous march” is a synonym for the famine of the 1990s.Footnote ⁷⁷ Yet government pronouncements did not indicate any new policies that might have been able to respond to the scale of the new food crisis. Instead, the government retrenched around its long-standing policy of food self-sufficiency, that is to say, growing enough food at home to minimize reliance on imports.Footnote ⁷⁸

The government continued to rely on extended compulsory mass labor mobilizations, especially during the transplanting and harvesting parts of the agricultural cycle to try to substitute for imports.Footnote ⁷⁹ Increased labor intensity on its own without adequate fertilizer, chemicals, and technology cannot, however, increase yields. Mass-labor activities that were nominally “voluntary” but, in practice, entirely compulsory also had natural limits. The already overextended workforce suffered twice over from the impact of the new sanctions; food security diminished as the physical demands on them increased.

Ideological claims to the contrary, in practice the government made attempts to mitigate the import dependence they denied, providing de facto recognition of the economic importance of imports. It promoted the development of alternative energy resources, including hydropower and solar panels. These efforts might have been useful as part of a realistic energy plan, but the government failed to acknowledge that these projects also relied on imports of technology, machinery, and parts, most of which were banned by sanctions. Solar panels, for example, were imported from China.Footnote ⁸⁰ Small-scale import-substitution projects also could not make much of an inroad into the large problems facing the interrelated energy and agriculture sectors. In 2015, for instance, hydropower provided an ostensibly large 76 percent of DPRK electricity production – but this was in the context of a huge drop in capacity; between 1990 and 2015, electricity consumption fell from 33 billion kilowatt hours (BkWh) to 11 BkWh.Footnote ⁸¹

Other “self-sufficiency” measures included campaigns to collect human waste or “night soil,” as a substitute for commercially produced fertilizer. As with the hydropower projects, even the best case outputs from these small-scale electricity projects and labor-intensive practices could never realistically respond to the large-scale energy requirements of a food production system designed to feed 26 million people.

The government failed to acknowledge how important marketization had been to recovery of the food economy in the post-famine years.Footnote ⁸² Marketized dynamics in North Korea had incentivized households, in urban as well as rural areas, to raise small livestock, like rabbits and chickens, to trade but also for consumption of eggs and meat.Footnote ⁸³ A faltering gray-area economy therefore resulted in decreasing the food supply and dietary diversity, as well as reducing income opportunities.

Sanctions and Starvation

In 2019 and 2020, mass starvation was likely avoided due to the utilization of household food stocks and massive food and fertilizer aid from China.Footnote ⁸⁴ Gray-area economic activities, by their nature, are difficult to quantify but they may have filled some of the food import gap until the border closures of 2020. There is no evidence of further deliveries of the massive food aid that would have been needed to fill the large food gap arising from consecutive shortfalls of around a million metric tons of food in 2021 and 2022. Quantitative and qualitative research over the last nearly thirty years of international organization activity in the DPRK shows, however, that most of the 26 million population have limited resilience to sustained food shortages, with few assets, generally poor living conditions, and precarious income.Footnote ⁸⁵ That the DPRK population is one the poorest in the world is undisputed. In 2021, the UN ranked the DPRK as the 15th poorest of 213 countries in the world, with GDP per capita at $654.Footnote ⁸⁶ Neither is the scale of food insecurity unacknowledged within specialist communities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in its authoritative global review, the International Food Security Assessment, 2022–23, reported that 68.6 percent of North Korea’s population – that is 17.8 million people – were food insecure in 2022.Footnote ⁸⁷ U.S. Department of Agriculture reported an increase from already very high totals of 63.1 percent and 16.3 million in 2021.Footnote ⁸⁸

North Koreans are acknowledged throughout the UN system, especially within the humanitarian and human rights agencies, as facing starvation precipitated by UN sanctions. In 2021, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the DPRK, Tomás Ojea Quintana, called for sanctions to be reviewed “and eased when necessary to both facilitate humanitarian and lifesaving assistance and to enable the promotion of the right to an adequate standard of living of ordinary citizens.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Even the UN Panel of Experts for the DPRK sanctions regime, whose main responsibility is to enforce sanctions, noted in a September 2022 report that “there can be little doubt that UN sanctions have unintentionally affected the humanitarian situation.”Footnote ⁹⁰

The Policy Choice

The extensive sanctions of 2016 and 2017 were designed to damage the DPRK economy with the aim of pressuring the DPRK government to give up its nuclear and missile program. UNSC policy has not achieved its aim of stopping DPRK nuclearization, which has instead accelerated since the implementation of the expanded UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017. The Security Council’s sanctions were successful in degrading the economy, including the food production sector that constitutes about a third of the civilian economy. Those who suffer most from UN sanctions, however, are North Korea’s 8 million children. North Korea’s elites do not go hungry; they access imported food and have enough hard currency to buy what they want, when they want. North Korean children do not have any responsibility for the nuclear activities of their government. They have no say in government policies and by definition, as non-adults, have limited capacity to help themselves in terms of obtaining food and health support.

The government of the DPRK has the primary responsibility for the welfare of its people but that does not mean that outside actors, like the UN, do not also have ethical and legal responsibilities to consider the impact of their actions on the most vulnerable, especially North Korea’s 8 million children.Footnote ⁹¹ The UN did not conduct a review of the potential impact of expanded sanctions prior to their implementation, nor has it carried out such a review since. Nevertheless, it would not be difficult to devise a sanctions regime that would exclude food production and health from its remit. It is a policy choice by the UNSC not to do so.

Footnotes

^a Reporting year is the most recent available.

¹ For all UN sanctions resolutions on the DPRK, see UNSC, 1718 Sanctions Committee, Resolutions (2023), accessed June 23, 2024, www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1718/resolutions.

² UNSC, Resolution 2270 (2016); UNSC, Resolution 2321 (2016); UNSC, Resolution 2371 (2017); UNSC, Resolution 2375 (2017); UNSC, Resolution 2397 (2017).

³ Hazel Smith, International Humanitarian Aid to North Korea: Progress, Results, and Controversy (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2023).

⁴ UNSC, “Security Council 1718 Sanctions Committee Approves Updates to Implementation Notice on Humanitarian Assistance Exemption Procedure for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Press Release, June 15, 2023, accessed December 8, 2024, https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15324.doc.htm.

⁵ Siegfried S. Hecker with Elliot A. Serbin, Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea’s Nuclear Program (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023).

⁶ The Reliefweb humanitarian website lists 3,714 reports on the DPRK, going as far back as 1995, accessed December 8, 2024, https://reliefweb.int/updates?list=Democratic%20People%26%23039%3Bs%20Republic%20of%20Korea%20Updates&advanced-search=%28PC74%29&page=185.

⁷ The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).

⁸ For FAO DPRK crop production data between 1961 and 2021, see FAO Statistics (FAOSTAT), “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Selected Indicators,” accessed June 23, 2025, www.fao.org/faostat/en/#country/116. For detailed data for 2018–2021, see FAO, “GIEWS Update: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Food Supply and Demand Outlook in 2017/18 (November/October),” July 9, 2018, accessed June 23, 2025, www.fao.org/in-action/kore/publications/publications-details/fr/c/1145025/; FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea Rapid Food Security Assessment,” May 2019, accessed June 23, 2025, www.fao.org/3/ca4447en/ca4447en.pdf; and FAO, “GIEWS Update: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Food Supply and Demand Outlook in 2020/21 (November/October),” June 14, 2021, accessed June 23, 2025, www.fao.org/3/cb5146en/cb5146en.pdf. South Korea’s RDA publishes most of its North Korea data in Korean. For a summary of RDA-provided DPRK crop production 2012–2021 data in English, see Statistics Korea, “2022 Statistical Indicators of North Korea,” 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, https://kostat.go.kr/board.es?mid=a20115000000&bid=11772&act=view&list_no=423589.

⁹ Hazel Smith, “The Return of Famine to North Korea? An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Economic and Humanitarian Impact of United Nation Sanctions,” in DPRK Sanctions, ed. Suk Lee (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2022, in Korean), 254.

¹⁰ Smith, “Return of Famine?” 254. For 2022 figures, see Maria Siow, “North Korea’s Farming Reform Push Unlikely to Ease Food Shortage, Analysts Say,” South China Morning Post, March 20, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3214162/north-koreas-farming-reform-push-unlikely-ease-food-shortage-analysts-say.

¹¹ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea.”

¹² Daniel Goodkind, Loraine West, and Peter Johnson, “A Reassessment of Mortality in North Korea, 1993–2008,” Presented at the Population Association of America, 2011, accessed June 23, 2025, https://paa2011.populationassociation.org/papers/111030; Thomas Spoorenberg and Daniel Schwekendiek, “Demographic Changes in North Korea: 1993–2008,” Population and Development Review 38, no. 1 (March 2012), 133–158.

¹³ Hazel Smith, “North Korea’s Food Security Strategy: Analytically Flawed, Inherently Fragile,” in Understanding Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea: Regime Dynamics, Negotiation, and Engagement, ed. Robert Carlin and Chung-In Moon (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022), 215.

¹⁴ More recent research indicates that very high child mortality figures attributed to sanctions were exaggerated and manipulated by Saddam Hussein’s government. The point here is that it was because of these concerns that the UN altered sanctions policy from economy-wide to targeted measures. The Iraq case is instructive, however, in that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was able to benefit from UN-sponsored oil for food mechanisms. The DPRK does not have oil resources, and food production is dependent on sanctioned oil and other commodity imports, for which there are no meaningful exceptions. See Tim Dyson and Valeria Cetorelli, “Changing Views on Child Mortality and Economic Sanctions in Iraq: A History of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics,” BMJ Global Health 2, no. 2 (2017): e000311, accessed June 23, 2025, https://gh.bmj.com/content/2/2/e000311; Susan Hannah Allen and David J. Lektzian, “Economic Sanctions: A Blunt Instrument?” Journal of Peace Research 50, no. 1 (2013): 121–135, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343312456224; Margaret Doxey, “Reflections on the Sanctions Decade and Beyond,” International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis 64, no. 2. (2009): 539–549; Security Council Report, “Special Research Report: UN Sanctions,” 2013, accessed June 23, 2025, www.securitycouncilreport.org/research-reports/un-sanctions.php; Daniel W. Drezner, “Sanctions Sometimes Smart: Targeted Sanctions in Theory and Practice,” International Studies Review 13, no. 1 (2011): 96–108; Richard Garfield, “Economic Sanctions, Humanitarianism, and Conflict after the Cold War,” Social Justice 29, no. 3 (89) (2002): 97–104, www.jstor.org/stable/29768138; Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Andrew Mack and Asif Khan, “The Efficacy of UN Sanctions,” Security Dialogue 31, no. 3 (2000): 279–292; Joanna Weschler, “The Evolution of Security Council Innovations in Sanctions,” International Journal 65, no. 1 (2009–2010): 31–43; Marc Bossuyt, “The Adverse Consequences of Economic Sanctions on the Enjoyment of Human Rights: Working Paper,” UN Economic and Social Council, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2000/33, June 21, 2000.

¹⁵ UNSC, Resolution 2270; UNSC, Resolution 2321; UNSC, Resolution 2371; UNSC, Resolution 2375; UNSC, Resolution 2397.

¹⁶ Leonardo Borlini, “The DPRK’s Gauntlet, International Law and the New Sanctions Imposed by the Security Council,” in Italian Yearbook of International Law (2016) 26, ed. Francesco Francioni, Natalino Ronzitti, Giorgio Sacerdoti, and Riccardo Pavoni (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 319.

¹⁷ UNSC, Resolution 2270.

¹⁸ See paragraph 8 for the eradication of the livelihood exemption. UNSC, Resolution 2371.

¹⁹ UNSC, “Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1718 (2006),” accessed June 23, 2025, www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1718.

²⁰ U.S. Mission to the UN, “Fact Sheet: UN Security Council Resolution 2397 on North Korea,” December 22, 2017, accessed June 23, 2025, https://usun.usmission.gov/fact-sheet-un-security-council-resolution-2397-on-north-korea/.

²¹ U.S. Mission to the UN, “Fact Sheet,” December 22, 2017.

²² UNSC, Resolution 2397.

²³ UNSC, Resolution 2397.

²⁴ Quote from U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and U.S. Coast Guard, “North Korea Sanctions,” 2019, accessed June 23, 2025, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/north-korea-sanctions. For a full list of activities covered by UN sanctions on the DPRK, including exports, imports, international travel, shipping, diplomatic activity, finance, scientific cooperation, and culture (statues and art), see UNSC, “Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1718.”

²⁵ UNSC, Resolution 2375, paragraphs 13, 14, and 15.

²⁶ Kyoochul Kim, “Impacts of COVID-19 on North Korea’s Trade,” in 2020/2021: The DPRK Economic Outlook, ed. Suk Lee (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2021), 84, accessed June 23, 2025, www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/reportView?pub_no=17150.

²⁷ Kim, “Impacts of COVID-19,” 84.

²⁸ Kim, “Impacts of COVID-19,” 84.

²⁹ Yonhap News Agency, “N. Korea Trade Sinks 17.3 pct in 2021 on Sanctions, Pandemic,” July 14, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20220714005900320.

³⁰ Yonhap News Agency, “N. Korea Trade Sinks.”

³¹ Korea Times, “NK’s Trade Reliance on China Hits 10-Year High in 2022,” July 21, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, bit.ly/44KRwU2.

³² U.S. Mission to the UN, “Fact Sheet: Resolution 2375 (2017) Strengthening Sanctions on North Korea,” September 11, 2017, accessed June 23, 2025, https://usun.usmission.gov/fact-sheet-resolution-2375-2017-strengthening-sanctions-on-north-korea/.

³³ James H. Williams, David Von Hippel, and Peter Hayes, Fuel and Famine: Rural Energy Crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Policy Paper #46) (La Jolla: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California San Diego, 2000), 1–48, accessed June 23, 2025, https://escholarship.org/content/qt62p9634r/qt62p9634r_noSplash_abe5279c0749ca8412b4cdae7adc9b13.pdf?t=krnd71.

³⁴ America Gas Association, “New Report: Natural Gas Critical to Agriculture Sector,” News Report, March 22, 2023, accessed December 8, 2024, https://tinyurl.com/3hr7mu6z.

³⁵ There is a worldwide debate about the undesirability of such dependence. For the purposes of this chapter, it is sufficient to acknowledge how and why global food production is dependent on fossil fuels. A useful explanation of why can be found in UN Environment Programme, “The End to Cheap Oil: A Threat to Food Security and an Incentive and an to Reduce Fossil Fuels in Agriculture,” April 2012, accessed June 23, 2025, www.agrofossilfree.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/The-End-to-Cheap-Oil-UNEP-Alert-Service-2012.pdf.

³⁶ UNSC, Resolution 2397.

³⁷ The US government Energy Information Administration reported that in 2021, South Korean consumption of “petroleum and other liquids” was around 2.5 million barrels a day. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “South Korea,” April 13, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/KOR.

³⁸ Bank of Korea, “Gross Domestic Product Estimates for North Korea in 2021,” July 27, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, www.bok.or.kr/eng/bbs/E0000634/view.do?nttId=10071884&menuNo=400069.

³⁹ Smith, “Return of Famine?” 253.

⁴⁰ FAO, “GIEWS Update: 2017/18,” 4.

⁴¹ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea.”

⁴² FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea.”

⁴³ This figure was first published in Smith, “Return of Famine?” Data compiled from U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service, “DPRK Food Grains Situation Update in MY 2018–2019” (Seoul: Global Agricultural Information Network, 2020), accessed December 8, 2024, www.fas.usda.gov/data/south-korea-dprk-food-grains-situation-update-my-2018-19; FAO, “GIEWS Update: The DPRK,” April 27, 2016, accessed December 8, 2024, www.fao.org/3/i5572e/i5572e.pdf; FAO, “GIEWS Special Alert No. 340,” July 20, 2017, accessed June 23, 2025, https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/66b3e299-e889-4e52-84d7-97971bfd419e; FAO, “GIEWS Update: 2017/18”; FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea”; FAO, “GIEWS Update: 2020/21”; RDA figures from Seung Wook Hong, “North Korea’s Food Production Down Five Percent in 2020,” Radio Free Asia, December 21, 2020, accessed December 8, 2024, www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/food-12212020203849.html.

⁴⁴ UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), DPRK Needs and Priorities 2020 (Pyongyang: OCHA, 2020), 15, accessed December 8, 2024, https://dprk.un.org/en/42877-dprk-needs-and-priorities-plan-2020-issued-april-2020; Government of the DPRK, Voluntary National Review on the Implementation of the 2030 Review of the Sustainable Development (Pyongyang: State Planning Commission National Task Force for Sustainable Development, 2021), accessed June 23, 2025, bit.ly/44Cgk0m.

⁴⁵ For 2021 food import requirement, see FAO, “GIEWS Update: 2020/21”; for 2021 and 2022 data, see RDA, “DPRK Produces 4.69 Million Metric Tons of Food Crop – Up by 290 Thousand Metric Tons YoY,” Seoul, 2022. Mimeo provided to the author and translated from Korean by the Korea Development Institute, Seoul.

⁴⁶ These figures are aggregated totals related to a notional average calorific requirement; the actual food requirements of individuals differ according to age and other circumstances. Also, the figures do not imply that should the total amount necessary to feed the entire population at minimum levels be available, then each individual would actually receive an equal share of available food. In no society is food distributed equally. Nevertheless, these averages are useful in that they allow a calculation of a basic minimum of food production below which mass starvation is likely to occur. These base figures are used by donors and international organizations as benchmark indicators when assessing food needs of a particular country. For 2019 figures, see FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea.”

⁴⁷ USAID, “Frequently Asked Questions: Food Assistance,” U.S. Agency for International Development, February 28, 2023, accessed December 8, 2023, www.usaid.gov/food-assistance/faq.

⁴⁸ USAID, International Food Assistance Report: Fiscal Year 2021 Report to Congress, 2022, 3, accessed June 23, 2025, www.fas.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2024-01/IFAR%20FY%202022.pdf.

⁴⁹ On faltering marketization, see Suk Lee, “North Korea’s Economic Crisis, How Far Will It Go?: Analysis of the Macroeconomic Trends in 2020 and Outlook for 2021,” in 2020/2021, 16–53, accessed June 23, 2025, www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/dprkView?art_no=3285.

⁵⁰ Fei Su and Lora Saalman, “China’s Engagement of North Korea: Challenges and Opportunities for Europe” (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2017), 27–28, accessed June 23, 2025, www.sipri.org/publications/2017/other-publications/chinas-engagement-north-korea-challenges-and-opportunities-europe.

⁵¹ Elizabeth Shim, “Report: China Boosts Food Aid to North Korea,” UPI, August 20, 2019, accessed June 23, 2025, www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/08/20/Report-China-boosts-food-aid-to-North-Korea/7541566299449/.

⁵² Korea Development Institute, “Table 3.9. Major Foodstuffs Imported from China,” in 2020/2021, 152. For discussion, see Kim, “Impacts of COVID-19,” 80–106, accessed June 23, 2025. www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/reportView?pub_no=17150.

⁵³ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea,” 26.

⁵⁴ Asahi Shimbun, “China Bailout to North Korea: Massive Food and Fertilizer Aid,” November 3, 2020, accessed June 23, 2025, www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13897237.

⁵⁵ Kyoochul Kim, A Protracted Pandemic and North Korea’s External Trade in 2021 (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2022), 14–15.

⁵⁶ Leng Shumei and Shan Jie, “China–N. Korea Border City Dandong Embraces Tourism Boom after COVID-19 Policy Shift,” Global Times, February 17, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1285667.shtml.

⁵⁷ Soo-yeon Kim, “N. Korea’s Food Crisis Is Still Grave Despite Imports from China: Unification Minister,” Yonhap News Agency, July 10, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20230710005001325.

⁵⁸ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea,” 39.

⁵⁹ Hazel Smith, “Nutrition and Health in North Korea: What’s New, What’s Changed and Why It Matters,” North Korean Review 12, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 7–34.

⁶⁰ For studies of post-famine marketization, see Hazel Smith, North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Byung-Yeon Kim, Unveiling the North Korean Economy: Collapse and Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For discussion of why economic growth faltered around 2016, see Byung-Yeon Kim, Dialogue on the North Korea Economy, May 2021 (Seoul: Korea Development Institute, 2021), accessed June 23, 2025, www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/reportView?pub_no=17066.

⁶¹ Hazel Smith, “North Korea: Market Opportunity, Poverty and the Provinces,” New Political Economy 14, no. 2 (June 2009): 231–256, https://doi.org/10.1080/13563460902826005.

⁶² Smith, “North Korea: Market Opportunity,” 231–256.

⁶³ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea,” 39.

⁶⁴ UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Further Analysis on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2017 (Pyongyang: UNICEF, 2019), 13, accessed June 23, 2025, www.unicef.org/dprk/media/626/file/MICS%202017.pdf.

⁶⁵ UNICEF, Further Analysis.

⁶⁶ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea,” 39.

⁶⁷ FAO and WFP, “DPR Korea,” 39.

⁶⁸ Kim, North Korea Economy.

⁶⁹ Rimjin-gang, published by Asia Press, provides a useful and credible source from inside the DPRK, accessed December 8, 2024, www.asiapress.org/rimjin-gang/. See also The Daily NK, whose website states that it relies on “citizen journalist” from inside the DPRK, accessed December 8, 2024, www.dailynk.com/english/presidents-message/.

⁷⁰ For example, Ha Yuna, “Lack of Food Leads to Deaths from Hunger in Sinuiju,” April 11, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, www.dailynk.com/english/lack-food-leads-deaths-hunger-sinuiju/; Lee Chae Un, “N. Korea Orders Provincial Authorities to Ensure Military Units on Border Have Enough Food,” Daily NK, August 24, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, bit.ly/4litvdP; Lee Chae Un, “Yanggang Province Calls on Security and Police Officials to Help Resolve Food Shortages,” Daily NK, June 14, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, www.dailynk.com/english/yanggang-province-calls-on-security-and-police-officials-to-help-resolve-food-shortages/; Ha Yuna, “Some Families in North Korea Face Starvation Due to International Sanctions, Sources Say,” Daily NK, May 31, 2021, accessed June 23, 2025, www.dailynk.com/english/some-families-in-north-korea-face-starvation-due-to-international-sanctions-sources-say/; Rimjin-gang, “Investigation Inside N. Korea: Famine in the Provinces: ‘Many People Have Died from the Start of May Due to Starvation and Disease …’ (3) The Authorities Treat Starvation Deaths As Deaths by Disease … Some People Even Eat Bark from Pine Trees to Survive,” May 27, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.asiapress.org/rimjin-gang/2023/05/society-economy/famine3/; Rimjin-gang, “Investigation Inside N. Korea: Famine in the Provinces: ‘Many People Have Died from the Start of May Due to Starvation and Disease …’ (2) Workers Can’t Go to Work Due to Malnutrition … Even at the DPRK’s Largest Iron Mine,” May 22, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.asiapress.org/rimjin-gang/2023/05/society-economy/famine2/; Lee Chae Un, “N. Korean Border Guard in Samjiyon Deserts Unit Due to Starvation,” The Daily NK, April 7, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.dailynk.com/english/north-korean-border-guard-samjiyon-deserts-unit-due-starvation/; Lee Chae-Un, “Pyongyang’s Chief Party Secretary Orders Distribution of Food to Starving Families,” January 16, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, www.dailynk.com/english/pyongyang-chief-party-secretary-orders-distribution-food-starving-families/.

⁷¹ The focus of humanitarian work in food emergencies is young children who, by definition, rely on others but any population group without resources because of health or social disadvantage will be vulnerable as, again by definition, they have less capacity to access whatever food is available and will be in competition with those who have more resources. UNICEF reports that in food emergencies, “The greatest consequences are borne by children, adolescents and women.” See UNICEF, “Maternal and Child Nutrition in Humanitarian Action,” n.d., accessed December 8, 2024, www.unicef.org/nutrition/maternal-and-child-nutrition-humanitarian-action.

⁷² Hazel Smith, Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2005).

⁷³ For detail and discussion of which population groups suffered most and why during and after the famine years, see Smith, North Korea.

⁷⁴ Matthew Bates and Tom Morrison, “Prospects for Food Self-Sufficiency in the DPRK,” Interview, Sino-NK, June 2013, accessed December 8, 2024, https://sinonk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/morrison-interview.pdf.

⁷⁵ Smith, “North Korea’s Food Security Strategy.”

⁷⁶ Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Closing Address at Sixth Conference of Cell Secretaries of Workers’ Party of Korea,” April 9, 2021, accessed December 8, 2024, https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1617920275-776284784/respected-comrade-kim-jong-un-makes-closing-address-at-sixth-conference-of-cell-secretaries-of-workers-party-of-korea/?t=1625732694913.

⁷⁷ KCNA, “Respected Comrade.”

⁷⁸ Smith, “North Korea’s Food Security Strategy.”

⁷⁹ Smith, “North Korea’s Food Security Strategy,” 218–219.

⁸⁰ Jason Bartlett, “North Korea Plans to Dig Deep into Renewable Energy Alternatives,” The Diplomat, December 7, 2021, accessed June 23, 2025. https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/north-korea-plans-to-dig-deep-into-renewable-energy-alternatives/.

⁸¹ U.S. Energy Information Administration, “North Korea: Electricity,” 2018, accessed June 23, 2025, www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/PRK.

⁸² For detail and discussion see Smith, “North Korea’s Food Security Strategy.”

⁸³ WFP, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Interim Country Strategic Plan 2019–2021, February 2019, accessed June 23, 2025, https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000103512/download/?_ga=2.48500388.328151086.1689162967-1973382074.1689162967.

⁸⁴ Asahi Shinbun, “China Bailout.”

⁸⁵ See, for example, UNICEF, Further Analysis.

⁸⁶ UN Statistics Division, “Basic Data Selection,” accessed December 8, 2024, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/Basic.

⁸⁷ Yacob Abrehe Zereyesus et al., International Food Security Assessment, 2022–32 (GFA-33) (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, September 2022), 56, accessed June 23, 2025, www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/104708/gfa-33.pdf?v=1137.8.

⁸⁸ Felix Baquedano et al., International Food Security Assessment, 2021–31 (GFA-32) (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, July 2021), 71, accessed June 23, 2025. www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=101732.

⁸⁹ UN, “Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” A/76/392, October 8, 2021, 7, accessed June 23, 2025, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N21/279/99/PDF/N2127999.pdf?OpenElement.

⁹⁰ UNSC, Report and Letters from the Panel of Experts Established Pursuant to Resolution 1874 (2009) Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/2022/668, September 7, 2022, accessed June 23, 2025, www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/N2260853.pdf.

⁹¹ Hazel Smith, “The Ethics of United Nations Sanctions on North Korea: Effectiveness, Necessity and Proportionality,” Critical Asian Studies 52, no. 2 (2020): 182–203, https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2020.1757479.

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Figure 2.1 Food import requirements (deficit), commercial food imports, and food aid, 2015/2016 to 2019/2020 (in 1,000 metric tons).1.Grain deficit data from the FAO for 2015–2018. RDA data is used for 2019/2020 because, although the FAO published government figures for 2019/2020 figures, the FAO never confirmed their accuracy.442.FAO marketing year data runs from November to October. The main crop produced in, for example, 2018, is consumed in the following year, that is, 2019. By contrast, U.S. Department of Agriculture reporting uses calendar years. The Department of Agriculture reported crop production attributed to a calendar year is, however, identical to FAO marketing year totals.3.Commercial food import and food aid data is from U.S. Department of Agriculture. Commercial food import data, 2019, from China is only for the period January–September 2019; from other countries it is for the period January–October 2019. U.S. Department of Agriculture food aid data for 2019 is for January–October 2019.

Table 2.1 Child malnutrition in North Korea, 1998–2017

Source: This table was first published in Smith, “Return of Famine?” 260. Compiled from UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank (2021). Global Expanded Database Wasting (Survey Estimates, National and Disaggregated), April 2021; Global Expanded Database Stunting (Survey Estimates, National and Disaggregated), April 2021, both accessed December 8, 2024, https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/malnutrition/.

Table 2.2 Child malnutrition in North Korea and selected Asian countries

Source: This table was first published in Smith, “Return of Famine?” 260. Compiled from UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank (2021). Global Expanded Database Wasting; Global Expanded Database Stunting.

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