See no good, hear no good ...

By Andrei Lankov

The world's media is a strange universe in which the supposedly biggest news stories are forgotten after a few months, and many statements are proven wrong by subsequent events ― but who cares?

Reporting on North Korea gives us many examples of how peculiar a media picture of the world can become. More or less every year (well, every second year) the world's newspapers in spring or early summer predict gloom and doom in North Korea ― usually anticipating that something akin to the disastrous famine of the 1990s might occur again. By autumn, nothing happens, but by that time the earlier gloomy predictions are safely forgotten ― and, of course, the absence of a widely predicted famine, unlike an actual famine, is not newsworthy.

This year was no exception. Do you remember what the world's media wrote about North Korea in June? Merely five months ago, I mean? Well, let me remind you: "North Korea's historic drought expected to cause famine, says UN" (CNN, 25 June); "North Korea's ‘Worst Drought' Threatens Famine" (Forbes, 18 June); "Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea Faces Historic Famine" (International Business Times, 10 June). Additions for this list can be easily found.

The alarmist reports were triggered by the North Korea official press which then reported that the country was suffering from "drought, the worst in a century". Some problems were confirmed by UN agencies, so the panic mills began to turn.

I barely paid attention ― like most people I take seriously. We remembered how in the last year the media spotted similar headlines: "North Korea army mobilized as rivers run dry in worst drought in years" (Thomson Reuters, 23 June of 2014); "Drought In North Korea Brings Back Fears Of Widespread Famine" (ThinkProgress, 24 June of 2014). Once again, those are 2014 headlines.

And what happened in 2014? When harvesting was over, the country had the best harvest in a quarter century or so. Of course, no newspaper rushed to run this story. On the contrary, reports about this remarkable achievement, even when published, were hidden on the back pages of specialized journals. Thus, most readers vaguely remembered the famine-related predictions, but had no clue that the year 2014 was not another year of famine, but in fact a year of bumper harvest.

Admittedly, this was not the first year of witnessing such a state of affairs. For roughly a decade, the reporting on North Korea was dominated by a cycle of alarmist news about imminent famine, followed by barely reported good or, at least, acceptable harvests.

It seems that similar things are happening again. The first reports from North Korea indicate that the supposedly unprecedented drought failed to have any noticeable impact on the situation in the country. The market prices for rice are going down ― and most of the rice and other grains in North Korea are now bought and sold at markets. Right now the price fluctuates at around 5000 NK won per kilo which is lower than the November 2014 price of 8000 NK won. If anything, it indicates that the actual harvest this year is even better than the bumper harvest of 2014.

Well, this might be an excessively optimistic view, since preliminary estimates, available early November, seem to indicate that the 2015 harvest is going to be below the record-breaking level of last year, but only by a small margin. In other words, we are going to get what can be described as a good harvest by North Korean standards. It will not bring an abundance of food, US style, but it will ensure that nobody is likely to starve to death, even though many people are going to be malnourished next spring, when the reserves will hit the lowest point. For our readers this does not sound like prosperity, but for the North Koreans it is markedly better than what they have experienced for the last two decades.

The reasons are clear. The switch to household-based teams, however incomplete and indecisive, began in 2013 and rapidly ensured that farmers would work better. The private markets, tacitly tolerated and even encouraged by Kim Jong Un, ensure a swift redistribution. So, life is tough, but much better than anything within the living memory of any North Korean below the age of 35.

But this does not make news. So, I strongly expect that in June or July 2016 newspapers will again tell us about an imminent famine ― and then will remain largely silent about another reasonably good harvest.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.

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