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Kim Jong Un said the country was “fighting hard” to recover from the floods and typhoons, according to an official Korean central news agency. The country’s media constantly shows how Kim Jong Un urges officials to do everything possible to minimize damage to the crop and increase the crop itself.
“How many people have struggled and suffered in difficult conditions this year? Kim spoke sensually in her speech during the grand military parade on October 10. “The patriotic commitment of the soldiers of our People’s Army in the quarantine front and the recovery from natural disasters cannot be spoken without tears of gratitude.”
Three powerful storms hit the country in just two weeks in August and September, just before the main annual harvest, destroying the food supply in a country where the United Nations (UN) World Food Program estimates that around 40 per One hundred of the population is already undernourished.
The catastrophic situation was fueled by last year’s poor harvests and disrupted food imports from China and other countries due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“People are reportedly selling their possessions, furniture, applying for loans, and pulling mountains to collect medicinal herbs, any food to eat, as well as cultivating small areas of land just to survive,” said this week’s preliminary general. . A copy of the report to the Assembly quoted the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea.
The closure of borders due to COVID-19 has reduced imports of agricultural products such as fuels and fertilizers during this year’s planting, and as a result, this year’s harvest may be the lowest since 1994, according to the report.
Although extreme weather conditions have disrupted the agricultural sector around the world, North Korea is particularly vulnerable. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), only 22 percent of this mountainous country. land suitable for crops.
Furthermore, the country’s isolation from world trade makes it forever dependent on food aid, primarily from China. Floods and droughts caused famines in the 1990s, which cost about 10 percent. lives of the population.
“North Korea’s dependence on rainfed agriculture, limited areas of good-quality arable land, low levels of mechanization in the agricultural sector, and difficulties in importing agricultural products such as fertilizers make the country particularly vulnerable to environmental impacts. climate impacts, “Kun said in an interview. Li, spokesperson for the UN World Food Program for Asia-Pacific.
Although North Korea has improved its agricultural production in recent decades, the country is still trailing to the bottom of the Global Hunger Index (GDP) and to the top of the Risk Management Index, given the risk of natural disasters.
Floods and droughts regularly hit North Korea, resulting in a persistent annual food deficit of around one million tons, according to FAO estimates.
In the summer of 2018, the air temperature rose 11 degrees Celsius above average, and a typhoon and floods ravaged the country in August, destroying more than 17,000 hectares of crops, according to a report by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) of the United Nations.
In the same year, the country’s economy contracted further since 1997. Fitch Solutions predicts the same contraction this year as the coronavirus pandemic closes borders and floods destroy entire areas of crops.
According to the state media organization KCNA, this year’s average summer rainfall was the second highest in 25 years.
The February and April reports recall “anomalous phenomena” due to global warming. The South Korean Meteorological Service predicts that the average temperature in the northern neighbor will be 15 percent higher over the next twenty years, compared to three decades before 2010.
Climate risk factors in North Korea have been exacerbated by decades of deforestation.
Since the 1970s, people have cut down trees to prepare hills suitable for agriculture, said Myeong Soojeong, senior researcher at the Korea Environmental Institute. According to the FAO, in the last three decades, nearly 900,000 hectares of forest have been lost.
All of this makes the country even more vulnerable to both high air temperatures and flooding, as declining trees make it difficult to absorb excess rainwater, said Kong Woo-seok, a professor of geography at the university. Kyung Hee from Seoul.
“It’s a closed circle,” said the professor. “Global warming is accelerating the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and North Korea is particularly vulnerable to such phenomena due to the lack of an isolated economy and social infrastructure.”
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