Speculation over internal conditions in North Korea and the stability of its regime is even more rampant than usual.
Reports of food shortages, a COVID outbreak and political volatility have fanned much of the speculation. Kim Jong Un’s recent extended absence from public view simply fueled the fire, triggering renewed rumors of health problems.
Still, it never pays to sell the regime short. It has outlived countless previous reports of its imminent demise.
Kim has now reappeared much thinner than before, but this has only fueled more speculation. His return to the scene coincided with senior leadership meetings in which he warned of dire food shortages, a dangerous influx of foreign influence and a “grave” breach of the country’s defenses against the COVID virus. Some experts interpreted the trifecta of failings as potentially leading to regime instability or collapse.
Kim acknowledged that the country’s food situation is getting “tense,” going so far as to warn of another “arduous march,” a reference to the 1990s famine that killed an estimated one million people. Crop shortages, skyrocketing food prices and closure of markets have led to increasingly dire conditions.
More from Opinion
The Geneva-based Assessment Capacities Project concluded more than 10 million North Koreans are in need of humanitarian assistance. Last month, an unconfirmed report from within North Korea indicated less than 30% of households are having proper meals.
North Korea’s harvest is habitually a million tons short of what is needed for minimal nutritional levels, which is made up in trade or food aid. Pyongyang blames the food crisis on last year’s typhoons and flooding, but decades of failed socialist economic mismanagement and draconian COVID restrictions imposed last year are primarily responsible.
The regime closed its borders last year to prevent a virus outbreak. Subsequently, trade with China, the regime’s principal trading partner, plummeted by 90%. Representatives of international nongovernmental organizations, which could facilitate food aid, have all departed the country. Pyongyang has repeatedly refused international offers of COVID support and food or rejected monitoring of aid distribution.
Three generations of the Kim family have proven remarkably adept at outlasting and outmaneuvering threats to their hold on power.
Source link