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The last couple of weeks were marked by another outburst of alarmist reporting on North Korea. This time the topic is the drought which has hit the country and, as some people speculate, will produce grave consequences, perhaps even famine.
Stories about the unusually dry weather have been around since May, and visitors to the North Korean countryside paint a rather grim picture of the situation there. However, talk began in earnest when the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the most official of all official North Korean media, confirmed reports on June 16. The KCNA report sounds even more alarmist than similar reports in the Western media: the ongoing drought is described as "he worst in 100 years".
So, many observers have begun to talk as if a major famine is about to hit North Korea again, and we will face a repetition of events from the 1990s when more than half million North Koreans starved to death.
However, there is good reason to remain somewhat skeptical about these reports. This year's drought seems to be serious indeed, but it is far too early to worry about its as yet undetermined consequences.
To start with, the world media cry wolf more or less every year. A quick look at the headlines easily confirms this. For example, in 2012 one could see such Associated Press headlines as "Korean Drought Worst in a Century for North and South Korea," and "North Korea Suffering Serious Drought." So, the "worst in 100 years" drought has already happened, in the year 2012.
And what about 2014? Well, look at the Reuters headline from June 23 last year "North Korea Faces Worst Drought in Over a Decade." Well, this time, it was merely slated to be the worst in a decade…
Indeed, as every North Korea watcher with sufficiently long memory will tell you that it is unusual when in spring or early summer a looming disaster is not reported.
But what about real famine? So far, the last decade has been a period of steady improvement in harvests and the food situation. US specialized agencies estimated that last year's harvest (remember the 2014 reports about the "worst drought in over a decade"?) was a record high, perhaps the best in a couple of decades.
I have been told that this time things must be really tough, since the North Korean media itself admitted that there were problems. Indeed, there is a popular belief that the North Korean media never reports domestic problems.
However, this belief is outdated, since such an approach was discarded almost two decades ago. In the late 1990s, North Koreans discovered that they would be unable successfully ask for foreign aid if their official media outlets did not change their old habits of painting only a rosy picture of the domestic situation. Indeed, it was a bit schizophrenic to ask for foreign aid, citing a major famine while your media produced stories about farmers celebrating yet another bumper harvest.
Hence, the policy changed. Now, if the North Korean government judges that the situation warrants foreign assistance, they usually order their media to report on ongoing problems. It always has to be done in a manner which puts responsibility for situation down to bad weather or other factors beyond human control.
If anything, the scale of the material damage is often exaggerated by the North Koreans. They understand that worldwide, a number of countries compete for assistance, so the bigger your claims, the more aid you are likely to get. Hence, every few years we hear stories about a drought or floods which are the "worst in a decade," "worst in 50 years" or "worst in 100 years." These floods and droughts, as we have seen above, do not prevent North Korean farmers from producing more food than ever.
Does all this mean that reports should be ignored? Not exactly. After all, we all remember what happened to the boy from Aesop fables who loved to cry wolf: the real wolf did eventually come. The higher-than-usual volume of official complaints, combined with witness accounts, seemingly confirms: the drought is serious this time, so it is likely that this year the harvest will be well below the 2014 level. And one should remember: the record-breaking 2014 harvest was still slightly below subsistence level, so even a small fall in output will create a food shortage.
Nonetheless, recent reports about looming disaster should be taken with a degree of skepticism.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him atanlankov@yahoo.com.
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