A Hostile Environment? The Case of Food
In a terse story on February 7, the Korean Central News Agency reported that "price (sic) of foodstuff is skyrocketing worldwide, sparking serious concern" and "is expected to continue to soar in the coming months." Yonhap reports that this story was followed by several others on global food and energy price inflation, including on the Korean Central Broadcasting Station and Radio Pyongyang.
Given the selectivity in what official news sources report to the North Korean public, these reports are hardly accidental. They no doubt reflect an effort to shift some of the blame for the country's rapidly rising food prices on the perennially hostile foreign environment.
Unfortunately, such arguments are only partly supported by the data. Food prices--although not rice prices--are indeed exploding worldwide, and are a legitimate cause of concern. But as the figure above shows, food prices in North Korea are rising much more rapidly than world food prices. The gap reflects the perennial problems the socialist agriculture system has in producing adequate supply at home. But it also reflects a variety of country risks, including a rapidly depreciating exchange rate and rising import prices set in motion by Pyongyang's own military provocations.
Comments
There is market in NK, but it it is so primitive and unprotected from the government that we should be cautious when we compare it with normal one.
Good to see you here, Soo-ho! For anyone who may not know Dr Lim's excellent book on the NK economy, details are here: http://www.list.or.kr/articles/article_view.htm?Div1=5&Idx=203
First I want to thank you for blogging on such a regular basis and giving interested people such deep insights into your observations regarding North Korea, I think this is a great way to share your knowledge with the public.
The Reporting about the hostile environment seems to be a new big topic on the agenda of KCNA. During the last two weeks KCNA painted a grim picture of the surrounding world. E.g. there were reports about the skyrocketing foodprices, bad weather damaging the harvest all around the world (Chile, the US, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and China), different animal diseases (bird flu, African swine pest, foot and mouth disease) and other threats all around the world like terrorism in the US, volcanoes in Japan and dioxin eggs in Germany.
The reporting started with the report on February 7. and since it became more and more. As there weren't such reports about "threats" in other countries before at KCNA, this might not just be an effort to shift the blame for existing problems but might also be a way to tell the people: "It's true, there are some problems here, but around us things look even worse."
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