Although we talk about the breakdown of the PDS system during the famine, there is evidence that it had not been functioning for some time before that.
Choi and Koo (2005) document problems with the PDS extending well back into the 1980s. As Soviet aid was terminated after 1987, daily grain rations distributed through the PDS—which officially had been 600 to 700 grams for most urban dwellers and 700 to 800 grams for high officials, military person- nel, and heavy laborers—were cut by 10 percent. In 1991, as economic difficul- ties worsened, the government launched a “let’s eat two meals a day” campaign, though according to former East German ambassador Hans Maretzki, cam- paigns to suppress food consumption were already under way in the late 1980s.
In 1992 rations were cut yet another 10 percent.12
The erratic performance of the PDS before the famine is confirmed by refu- gee interviews. The Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement conducted the earliest systematic refugee interviews in late 1997 through the first half of 1998 (KBSM 1998). This sample is biased in two important respects. First, just over half the respondents are from North and South Hamgyo˘ng provinces, which were hit particularly hard by the shortages. Second, their very refugee status suggests that they were among the most vulnerable—although perhaps the most entre- preneurial—in their particular locations.
The Distribution of Misery 59
Despite these possible sources of bias, it is revealing that almost 30 percent of the interviewees reported that regular food distribution had stopped by 1993 and that 93 percent said that such distribution had stopped by 1996 (table 3.2).
Similar evidence of the decline of the PDS is found in a pair of well-designed studies conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the first based on interviews of 440 adult refugees done in September 1998 (Robinson et al.
1999), the second based on a larger sample of 2,692 refugees conducted from July 1999 to June 2000 (Robinson et al. 2001). The first Hopkins study reported average daily rations for 1994 of only 150 grams per day. By 1997, however, reported rations had fallen to only 30 grams per person per day. The 1999–2000 interviews yielded similar findings. For 1995 respondents reported receiving only 120 grams per person per day; by 1998 this had fallen to 60 grams.
Outside of these refugee interviews, we do not have consistent data on PDS deliveries from the government itself until the fall of 1995 when the inter- national relief effort began. The data reported in figure 3.1 were provided by North Korean authorities to the World Food Programme/UN Food and Agri- cultural Organization assessment teams that began to visit the country regularly beginning in the fall of 1995. Unfortunately, they, too, are potentially subject to bias. The North Korean authorities arguably had incentives to understate food deliveries in order to maximize external support. Moreover, as with the food balance information we reviewed in chapter 2, these averages mask important distributional differences across regions and groups; we take these differences up in more detail below.
TABLE 3.2. Answers to Question “When Did Regular Food Distribution Stop?”
(September 1997–May 1998)
Source: Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement (1998)
FIGURE 3.1. Estimates of Daily per Capita PDS Rations
Note: In most cases, averages are taken directly from the source. Otherwise, they are calculated as the simple average of the estimates for different cohorts throughout the marketing year. Source: NAO/
WFP (various publications); Natsios 2001.
Nonetheless, the overall picture of the evolution of the PDS suggested by this data is broadly consistent with that generated by the refugee interviews.
Four points are worth noting. First, average distribution under the PDS for the period never reaches the absolute minimum need of approximately 457 grams per day necessary to provide 1,600 calories. Even if we make the 20 percent adjustment used in chapter 2 to account for the fact that the North Korean diet typically has other sources of calories—generating a minimum consumption figure of 365 grams per day—the average ration still consistently falls below it.
Second, while we would expect average rations to fall steadily from 1995–96 through 1998, the peak famine period, PDS rations do not recover after that point despite the increase in humanitarian assistance and the partial revival of production beginning in 1998. This can be seen in more detail in the monthly estimates we have extracted from WFP reports from 2000 through May 2004, when such reports were terminated (figure 3.2). In some months, rations get up to 350 grams, but in no month do they equal the 450-gram minimum.
The Distribution of Misery 61
FIGURE 3.2. PDS Rations, January 2000–May 2004.
Source: Humanitarian Development Resource Center for DPR Korea.
A third point concerns farmers; the one important exception to the rela- tively constant PDS rations in the postfamine period pertains to this group.
As figure 3.1 shows clearly, farmers’ rations turn upward with the fall harvest in 1999. This change was almost certainly a conscious policy decision, as the very low rations allocated to farmers at the harvests of 1995 and 1996 were undoubt- edly responsible for the difficulties the government had in procuring grain. If we consider that farmers also have easier access to other foodstuffs—not to mention any grain they can divert and cash income they can generate from trade—it is clear that at least some portion of the rural population ended up faring somewhat better in the wake of the famine, and perhaps even during it, than the urban populations. The obvious exception would have been those areas directly affected by the floods.
Finally, it is important to underscore that these numbers mask important seasonal fluctuations that constitute one of the most serious problems with the breakdown of the PDS. Historically, the months of April through June are the lean or hungry months in Korea: stocks from the previous fall harvest are running low, and early crops have not yet come in yet. In North Korea during the famine, this lean season would begin as early as December, and rations would fall to nominal amounts or nothing at all; this pattern was repeated in the spring of 1998 and again in 1999, when rations basically ceased. The period 2002–03 showed more even estimates of grain across seasons resulting from
increased shipments from South Korea, although levels remained low. But the data in figure 3.2 for 2000 and 2001—well after the peak of the famine had past—still show sharp seasonality in PDS deliveries.