Advertisement
Kim Jong-un hints at ‘hardships’, stoking fears of famine’s return amid North Korea’s pandemic isolation
- Three times this year, Kim has indicated his country is in trouble, raising the spectre of the deadly ‘Arduous March’ of the 1990s
- Sealed borders, severe weather, and the presumed spread of Covid-19 have combined to create a ‘gravely serious’ humanitarian situation, say observers
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
13
North Korea’s autocratic leadership is not known for drawing attention to problems within the country, where a popular children’s song proclaims “we have nothing to envy in the world”.
Advertisement
So when Kim Jong-un used a recent commemoration of the 1950-1953 Korean war to acknowledge the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns had sparked a “crisis of hardships” to rival the conflict, aid groups took notice.
Kim’s acknowledgement of growing deprivation late last month was the third such public acknowledgement this year, including an admission in June that the secretive country’s food situation was “getting tense”.
In April, the third-generation dictator, who assumed power in 2011, told officials to prepare for another “Arduous March”, the term used to describe a famine during the 1990s that is estimated to have cost between 240,000 and 3.5 million lives.
Advertisement
“The fact that Kim Jong-un is saying that the situation is dire indicates to me that things are bad in North Korea,” said Dan Chung, executive director of Crossing Borders, a US-based Christian aid group that works with North Korean refugees.
Advertisement