Kim Jong Un’s first eight years at the helm of the regime were marked by a stronger propaganda emphasis on improving the living standards of the North Korean people, who would “never have to tighten their belt again”. However, in February 2019, his promises crumbled in the face of the impossibility to get a relaxation of sanctions. Shortly after the failed summit with Trump in Hanoi, the cautious optimism of the previous months among the North Korean elite was replaced by the realization that North Koreans would have to continue facing hardships. Therefore, an approach based on a more “rational economic management” was deemed necessary by the leadership in order to untap the full potential of “economic self-sufficiency”. While the economic policy has shifted gradually yet substantially backwards towards autarchy and re-centralization, additional shocks have risen; exacerbating North Korea’s already dire humanitarian situation that is without doubt primarily caused by its internal system.
COVID-19: A matter of “national survival”
In his speech at the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea in October 2020, Kim acknowledged that North Korea has been hit by a triple distress of sanctions, COVID-19, and natural disasters. Being squeezed between the two largest initial outbreaks of the novel coronavirus in China and South Korea and with a fragile health system, North Korea immediately appeared as one of the most vulnerable countries to the health emergency that was unfolding. By framing it as a matter of “national survival”, the regime has responded to the existential threat of the virus by adopting measures that might have been successful in staving off contagions, even though official statements about zero cases of new coronavirus are hardly credible, but that have definitely brought the North Korean economy to its knees with perhaps a wider impact on the health and humanitarian conditions of the population than the disease itself. Borders closures to tourists since January 22 – it should be noted that tourism is one of the very few sectors of the North Korean economy that has so far been spared by international sanctions – and to all transfers of goods and services after a few days has inflicted an immediate blow to the economy: official North Korean exports to China fell by nearly 78% in 2020 compared to the previous year, while official imports from China dropped by 81%, according to Chinese customs data. After almost two years, there is no indicator of opening up anytime soon on the North Korean front. Hypothesis on the topic of re-opening are formulated on the basis of the regime’s experience with previous viral outbreaks such as Ebola (2014) and MERS (2015), which forced a very prolonged lockdown in North Korea but most of all on the prism of when China will re-open its borders, which is unlikely to happen before next year’s CCP National Party Congress.
In the meantime, the combined effects of the North Korean, Chinese, and Russian quarantine measures have taken a big bite particularly on North Korea’s agricultural sector by hampering the entry of food aid and seeds as well as the local production of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, adding to the unintended roadblocks for humanitarian action of the latest rounds of UN sanctions, which “introduced the pre-conditions for famine”, as Prof. Hazel Smith bluntly put it. North Korea’s extensive use of chemical fertilizers requires large amounts of natural gas and coal. Since 2017, however, North Korea’s imports of oil have been drastically reduced and those of natural gas have been banned. As a result, aside from humanitarian deliveries, Pyongyang’s reliance on energy supplies provided by Beijing and Moscow, largely in violation of the limits agreed upon in the UNSC, has dramatically increased. In light of the apparent failure of economic warfare to achieving policy goals, calls to re-examine the various sanctions regimes on North Korea have intensified particularly from UN experts, who have recently warned that “the risks of starvation loom large” on North Korea. Humanitarian agencies have long pointed to the fact that following the 2017 rounds, the exemption procedures were more cumbersome. Although the process was starting to become smoother again before the pandemic happened, other major obstacles were taking a heavy toll on humanitarian action, including the rapidly progressive drop in funding for operations, which has progressively been observed over the last two decades due to donors’ reluctance to give, and the collapse of the banking channel. Adding to that, there is the ongoing suspension of the monitoring system caused by North Korea’s COVID-19-related, full-scale national lockdown, which has forced all international NGOs to exit the country; thus making it impossible to independently verify official data and get a sense of what’s happening, especially in rural areas.
Ecological vulnerability: A catalyst for engagement?
In July 2020, Kim Jong Un appeared in North Korean state media issuing a rare warning that the “food situation is now getting tense”, which was reiterated in a Voluntary National Review that North Korea submitted to the UN examination of its sustainable development goals. In the pre-COVID period, the FAO estimated that over 10 million North Koreans were suffering from severe food shortages; however, in the last year and a half those figures have worsened. The country’s dire crop production has indeed been aggravated by extreme weather events that continue to plague North Korea; dramatically contributing to the harshening of human insecurity. The Korean Peninsula has historically been prone to natural hazards, however, in the last few years they have become more recurrent. Last year, North Korea was hit by three major typhoons over less than a month. Moreover, in the past twenty-five years, major floods were recorded every year except for 2001, 2008, 2009 and 2017. As a result, extreme pressure has been put on the state’s resilience capacities in North Korea.
From a broader perspective, North Korea’s already compromised ability to cope with climate change impacts stands as a stark reminder of the need to pay attention to the risks-multiplying effect of the security and climate nexus. It could be questioned whether environmental degradation poses the most immediate threats to the regime’s domestic control and stability. Still, it could amplify existing regional tensions and trigger escalations. On the other hand, environmental cooperation has offered some opportunities to engage with the North Korean officials and population. The fact that environmental engagement has been pursued mainly through foreign non-state actors raises the urgency for international NGOs to return to North Korea and resume their operations once the bans are lifted. All the more so, given the revival of public discourse taking place in North Korea around the need for effective environmental policies. And therein lies probably the biggest potential for Europeans, who seek to raise their profile in stabilising the Korean peninsula to be perceived as reliable and trustworthy interlocutors by North Koreans. The international community should explore new opportunities for cooperation with the North Korean regime in environmental issues. To do so, a necessary pre-condition should be to develop a sound understanding of the environmental and energy-related issues in regard to which Pyongyang has regularly applied for support within the framework of the UNFCCC and the UN sustainable development goals. That might very well take place in parallel with striving to reach a consensus on the need to minimize the unintended effects of sanctions on humanitarian action in North Korea: efforts should start from tackling the loopholes in the implementation regime.
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