23/01/07 Anger mounts as N. Korea puts ‘cattle before people’

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Anger mounts as N. Korea puts ‘cattle before people’

govt slashes annual food ration in half while bad harvest triggers an acute food crisis

A man rides on a cart pulled by a cow on a road between Pyongyang and Sinuiju in North Korea, Nov. 30, 2018. (Photo: AFP)

By UCA News reporter

Published: January 10, 2023 07:37 AM GMT

Farmers in North Korea have expressed their dismay over the government’s slashing of their annual food ration to half while the cattle food supply remains unchanged as the country reels under an acute food shortage.

North Korean farmers have been relying largely on the government’s supply of foodgrains that helps them survive massive food shortages, which Kim Jong-un’s regime has now halved, the Radio Free Asia (RFA) Korean Service reported on Jan. 7.

“Due to the lack of harvest this year, farmers who went to work 365 days … only received 200 days’ worth of grain,” an unnamed farmer told RFA.

Unlike the regular farmers, “cow managers” who work on the collective farms and take care of cattle received an additional “100 kilograms for 100 days’ worth of year-end grain all farmers receive for their daily labor,” stated an unnamed cow manager.

Reportedly, Kimjongsuk county has around four to six collective farming work groups consisting of 300-400 farmers who raise three to six working cows.

This preferential treatment has drawn the ire of many farmers who struggle to make ends meet due to declining harvests.

"Farmers complained that cows were treated more favorably than people"

“One hundred kilograms [220 pounds] of the corn kernel and corn stalks were supplied to the working cows on the cooperative farm,” said an official from South Pyongan province who refused to be named.

“As a result, farmers complained that cows were treated more favorably than people and that cows are more important than people [for the government],” the official further added.

However, until this year, cow managers were required to pay for the feed, in addition to medicines, and shoes for hooves, which forced them to work as porters at train stations and marketplaces to earn additional money, the report said.

The problems faced by the people in the nation are far more than just reduced food-grain rations.

Reportedly, temperatures have dropped far below freezing point and, as food becomes more scarce, large numbers of people have gone missing, believed to have starved or frozen to death.

Many homeless beggar children known as “kotebji,” have lost their lives on the streets while the employed have left their jobs and have been hunting and fishing in remote areas because food was unaffordable, RFA reported.

"North Korean authorities forced its citizens to donate patriotic rice"

The North Korean authorities had stopped providing rations for cows on collective farms during its economic crisis in the 1990s.

“The fact that corn kernels and corn stalks were supplied as feed to working cows for the first time [since the 1990s] seems to be an attempt to increase food production by mobilizing all working cows for farming,” said a government official.

“But it remains to be seen whether working cows will increase grain production as a result,” the official further added.

In December, North Korean authorities forced its citizens to donate “patriotic rice” to the state amid its massive food shortage that reportedly triggered public dissatisfaction.

Most citizens were ordered to donate 5kg, farmers must donate between 10 and 15kg, whereas students and the elderly must donate between 2 and 7kg.

The nation had a poor rice harvest due to colder temperatures and heavy cloud cover that reduced sunlight in July, which is the prime rice growing season, according to South Korea’s Rural Development Administration.

The agency estimated that North Korea’s overall crop production declined by 180,000 tons to 4.51 million tons, this year.