Living Conditions - Food
Historically, nearly three-quarters of the North Korean population have been entitled to purchase heavily subsidized food rations through the government's Public Distribution System (PDS). Kim envisaged the consumption of food based on the energy required to do a job rather than the prestige of the job. Thus, a person’s allotment of food grains does not necessarily parallel his or her wages. Under this 10-tiered structure based on age and occupational status, a working adult was entitled to 700 grams of food-grain per day, with children receiving 500 grams and the elderly 600 grams per day.
Over 40 percent of households in the hard years of famine in 1997 and 1998 relied on foraging as their principal source of food. There were some places that are comparatively better than other places. Along the seacoast, people could catch fish. The steel factories have something to trade with other countries so those workers still are getting paid. Pyongyang is the capital so most of those people get rice. In most big cities, however, the situation was the worst because there was no place to forage or to grow anything.
P‘yongyang uses an extensive, complex, and rigorous rationing system. ostensibly to ensure equitable distribution. Its novel features seem in many respects to favor the less privileged over the more privileged, but in actuality it reinforces the inequities in the system. To a North Korean the amount of rice in the grain ration is as important as the total grain allotment. Preferring rice to any other foodgrain, North Koreans would choose a smaller grain allotment composed exclusively of rice over a larger grain ration with a mixture of less rice and other grains. Only the elite. laborers with very hazardous jobs. some military officers on special assignment, and seriously ill patients in hospitals receive their full grain ration.
Almost all North Korean students in upper-middle school, high school, and college, as well as many adults, including members of military units, help with the spring planting and fall harvests. Schools are essentially closed during these periods, as are many offices and factories. Students are required to give 30 to 40 days of volunteer labor during the spring rice transplanting season, 15 to 20 days during the harvest, and an unspecified number of days during the monsoon season to repair flood damage. People seem to dislike work on the farms most of all. Volunteer laborers camp out on the front porch of farmers’ homes in crowded conditions. They generally receive inadequate food, certainly less than they are used to getting, and farmers find it difficult to put up with the people living temporarily in and around their homes. Sometimes the tension escalates into skirmishes.
The kind of rice — polished or unpolished — a North Korean is allotted under this system also is very important. Milling, often called "polishing" or "whitening", removes the outer bran layer of the rice grain. Milling affects the nutritional quality of the rice. Milling strips off the bran layer, leaving a core comprised of mostly carbohydrates. In this bran layer resides nutrients of vital importance in the diet, making white rice a poor competitor in the nutrition. Because rice contains very little gluten, which holds bread dough together, it is not often used to make bread.
Polished white rice has been stripped of its most nourishing outer layers — the bran and germ — leaving behind almost pure starch (complex carbohydrate). Polished rice is a staple food for over 50% of the world's population, but contains little bioavailable iron (Fe) to meet human needs. Unpolished rice contains a vitamin which prevents beriberi. The practice of polishing rice had its origin in the desire to improve its keeping quality, and the incidental whitening of the kernels has led to the establishment of a demand for a white product.
North Koreans have a definite preference for rice over corn, barley, or wheat. Only high government and party officials enjoy polished rice. A cabinet minister who receives 700 grams of grain in the form of polished rice is considered much more favored than a blast-furnace operator who receives 900 grams of grain per day as 50 percent unpolished rice, 40 percent corn, and 10 percent wheat flour. Rations for children are considered generous compared to rations for adults. Thus, a family consisting of adults only is generally less well off in terms of rationed food. It is a common occurrence for childless households to be short of grain well before the end of the month.
Maternal under-nutrition during gestation has been linked to early onset and cumulative incidence of coronary artery disease. Further, low birth weight, rapid weight gain in early life with low birth weight and postnatal retardation are predictors for weight gain and high blood pressure during early teenage years. In addition, short stature during adulthood is associated with stroke and coronary heart disease. What is more, malnutrition in early childhood has also been shown to have negative effects on mental development.
North Korean families receive grain rations only for members of the immediate family. When they have visiting guests or relatives or a wedding or funeral, they must ask their guests to bring their own rice rations. The basic diet for most North Koreans is rice and vegetables, three times a day, with fruit occasionally (when in season), chicken two or three times a month, and red meat five or six times a year. Heavy on carbohydrates, low in fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals, it is not a balanced or varied diet. According to defectors, the monotony of the same meal, three times a day, for long periods is a major source of dissatisfaction. Moreover, chronic malnutrition is a serious problem, as 27 percent of the population lived at or below the absolute poverty level in teh 1990s.
After enjoying a steady improvement in their diet from the late 1950s through the 1970s, North Korean consumers must have been disappointed with the lack of progress in the 1980s through the mid-1990s. A dramatic improvement in food supplies in the late 1970s had engendered high hopes for continued progress. Instead, hopes were dashed by an actual decline in rice allotments, both in rural and urban areas, continued shortages of fresh fruits, meats (except poultry), fish, kimchi, cooking oils, cigarettes, and liquor. According to defectors, the decline in rice allotments was a major source of dissatisfaction. However, the worst was yet to come.
The DPRK’s solution to inhospitable growing conditions was to develop one of the most input-intensive agricultural system in the world, one with complete dependency on fertilizers and pesticides. The choices that the leadership made over the years led to serious food shortages long before the famine of the 1990s. Recurring patterns of shortages are reported as early as 1945-46, 1954-55 and 1970-73.
Survival of the political system and its leadership rather than systemic economic development or concern about feeding its population appears to have been the priority of the DPRK leadership. Shortages in food and other essential means of survival were blamed on a hostile outside world. Food aid from the United States provided during the mass starvation in the 1990s was reportedly explained to the population as war reparations.
The seasonal arrival of extreme rains in July and August 1995 compounded by soil erosion and river silting led to flooding that destroyed the harvest and contributed to the period of starvation that has been deemed the great famine and referred to as the “Arduous March” by the DPRK. Between 1996 and 1999, it is estimated that between 450,000 and 2 million people starved to death.
In June 1998, a private South Korean organization called the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement (KBSM) released a report on the North Korean food crisis based on interviews with North Korean migrants in China. Summarizing results from five phases of interviews conducted between September 1997 and May 1998, the KBSM study reported that “the [cumulative] mortality rate over the last 2 years and 9 months (August 1995-April 1998) has reached 27.0 percent...The mortality rate for 1996 was at 8.86 percent [88.6 per 1,000] and for 1997, 19.60 percent [196 per 1,000].” The survey also found that the birth rate to sample families was 0.93 percent [9.3 per 1,000] in 1996 and 0.86 percent [8.6 per 1,000] in 1997. “We have determined,” the report stated, “that the worst famine in human history is now transpiring in North Korea”.
One of the unintended consequences of the human-made famine was the widespread emergence of informal markets. It is estimated that informal economic activities reached about 80 percent of total income for North Korean households a decade after the famine. As the Public Distribution System was no longer able to provide even minimal amounts of food, the authorities were unable to exercise the level of control they had once been able to. The breakdown of social control led to fissures in the blockade on information from outside the country. At the same time, control on the freedom of movement was loosened as large numbers of people attempted to escape from the DPRK and others sought to obtain supplies from China to trade. As many more North Koreans travelled back and forth to China, they were seeing for themselves the relative prosperity of China and received information about the ROK which was vastly different from the official propaganda of the government. The leadership made numerous efforts to rein in the markets and constrain the freedom of movement. These measures met with various levels of resistance. By 2006, the ban on trading in rice and corn was effectively ended.
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