[KS] KSR 2008-02: _Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform_, by Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland
Stephen Epstein
Stephen.Epstein at vuw.ac.nz
Tue Jul 15 23:47:34 EDT 2008
_Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform_, by Stephan Haggard
and Marcus Noland.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 368 pp. ISBN: 978-0-231-14000-3.
Reviewed by Daniel Schwekendiek
Seoul National University
info at daniel-schwekendiek.de
Famine in North Korea has been written by two distinguished experts
on East Asia, political analyst Stephan Haggard (Laurence and Sallye
Krause Professor at the University of California, San Diego) and
economist Marcus Noland (senior research fellow at the Institute of
International Economics). The book joins four further accounts in
English that deal comprehensively with social aspects of the North
Korean famine of the 1990s, two books written for general readership
(Natsios, 2001; Schloms, 2004) and two research theses aimed at a
specialist audience (Lee, 2005; Schwekendiek, 2007). The former two
publications, which are frequently referenced in Famine in North
Korea, primarily draw their evidence from the experiences of
humanitarian aid workers involved in North Korea, while the latter
two, published in departments of economics, make extensive use of
statistical analysis to investigate social aspects of the famine
crisis in North Korea.
Given the statistical blackout researchers face in dealing with North
Korea, Famine in North Korea itself does not make use of new,
previously unavailable or undiscovered sources: most of the data
comes from published reports and statistical databases that are in
the public realm and can be assessed with relative ease by
researchers in the field. The book also offers much qualitative
evidence, such as statements from refugees or expert views, and even
anecdotes, yet most of what is quoted has been borrowed from other
sources. Unlike Natsios (2001) or Schloms (2004), Haggard and Noland
did not conduct their own interviews with United Nations
representatives, staff members of relief organizations, researchers
or government officials. Moreover, in contrast to moving stories
written by North Korean refugees such as This is Paradise! or Eyes of
the Tailless Animals, the reader cannot be expected to be touched by
Famine in North Korea, as the book does not offer narrative-emotional
elements but limits itself to a straight research investigation,
although the book should be of interest to a non-specialist audience
as well.
The strength of Noland and Haggard's work lies in the skill with
which they bring together an extensive variety of secondary
literature and readily available statistics, which, in turn, are
interpreted throughout roughly 300 pages and conveyed in some 60
illustrations. This is an unprecedented collation, which, from a
methodological point of view, is clearly the most commendable feature
of the book. The authors provide an overview and analysis of the
great famine, try to identify those who may have benefited and those
who were most adversely affected, discuss the present situation, and
consider prospects for the future. As a comprehensive discussion of
the famine has been a lacuna in the literature, the book not only
succeeds in filling this gap with systematically corroborated
quantitative data, but also offers a comprehensive benchmark for
further socioeconomic studies on the North Korean famine. Despite the
lack of new data in Famine in North Korea, the book makes use of a
vast array of available sources of information: released refugee
reports, United Nations/DPRK nutritional assessments, macroeconomic
statistics, data from food aid agencies and trade statistics.
Statistics are chosen wisely, properly analysed, carefully discussed,
and presented in balanced fashion, all of this unquestionably making
the book worth the price of $35.
The book starts: "Beginning sometime in the early 1990s and extending
into 1998, North Korea experienced famine" (1, emphasis in italics
mine). This statement is not uncontroversial, as the government only
announced the "Arduous March" in 1996, after the floods that affected
the country in 1995 and 1996. These floods led to the devastation of
large parts of the national harvest and triggered the famine --or so
runs the DPRK government's explanation of its cause. Haggard and
Noland's implicit argument that the famine actually started earlier
makes sense given the finding that the North Korean economy
completely broke down after the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc in
1989. The most interesting conclusions made in the first chapters are
based on food balance sheet exercises: "If the North Korean
government had maintained access to commercial (food) imports during
the first half of the 1900´s, the famine could have been avoided"
(50). Worst of all, Pyongyang might have used humanitarian aid to
redirect money from commercial (food) imports to military and luxury
imports. If this is indeed the case, the responsibility for the
famine clearly shifted away from macro-economic shocks or natural
disasters to the North Korean government.
Furthermore, the book discusses who suffered during the famine
regardless of overall food availability, and the discussion raises
the crucial question of the distribution of resources, which is
largely a matter of the power to access these resources, particularly
in totalitarian famines (as in the pioneering analysis of Nobel
Laureate Amartya Sen, who wrote the foreword of the book). In this
light, the authors extensively discuss the role of the Public
Distribution System (PDS), the communist government's means of
allocating resources to the people (and also to keep them under
political control). The PDS was supposed to play a major role in
determining the entitlement to food before the onset of the famine,
when distribution was largely subject to occupation, age and prior
political loyalty. With the famine, this hierarchy broke down, yet,
as the authors argue, indirect effects such as geographic residence
(e.g. in the case of the political or military "core" class who
primarily resided in the capital) might have determined access to
food. Farmers are assumed to be better off during the famine, as they
had direct access to food, leading to hoarding, hiding,
pre-harvesting, diversion of food, and remittance of food to family
members (57). In contrast, urban dwellers are assumed to have been
hit hardest by the famine: they were fully dependent on the PDS,
which completely broke down during the famine's peak. The issue of
food aid is comprehensively addressed, where, from an international
community perspective, the most interesting questions might be
whether donations were diverted and if so, to what extent and by
whom. Haggard and Noland suggest that some 30% of the food aid could
have been diverted (125), and that such diversion did not primarily
take place on the central level (i.e., by the government in
Pyongyang), but more likely on the regional level by county
administrators.
Another focus of the book is the marketization of the communist North
Korean economy. Reforms were introduced in July 2002, although a de
facto marketization of the economy had already taken place during the
famine, when black and grey markets spread throughout the country as
a major coping mechanism after the breakdown of the PDS (173). These
economic reforms likewise created winners, losers, and more
importantly, high inflation. Among the losers during the reforms were
urban (male) workers. The situation apparently improved for some
entrepreneurs, however, such as women engaging in the emerging
informal economy (191), farmers (204), North Koreans with access to
foreign currency (from relatives abroad), and those in command of
power, e.g. military officers and party officials (194).
The book concludes with a discussion on how to treat North Korea in
the international political arena. Facing the dilemma that "aid to
North Korea serves to prolong the life of the existing regime" (229),
Haggard and Noland argue that the discontinuation of food aid will
most likely not lead to a regime change, as Pyongyang has already
managed to muddle through harder times; from a humanitarian point of
view, therefore, there is no alternative other than continuing to
assist North Korea while encouraging further reforms.
Finally, despite the overall skill with which Haggard and Noland
treat the topic, a few inconsistencies can be found in the logic of
the book's arguments. For instance, the authors argue, convincingly
enough, that North Korea's marketization of its economy cannot really
be compared to the Chinese model, given structural and macroeconomic
differences (215). At the same time, the authors state that "in our
view, the most sophisticated attempts to measure excess deaths (in
North Korea) put them in the range of 600,000 to 1 million" (76),
where the authors indirectly give credit to an estimation by Goodkind
and West (2002), that is largely based on China's Great Leap Forward.
In a similar vein, they cast doubt on the reliability of the UN/DPRK
nutritional assessments by considering "deliberate falsification"
(203) of these technically complex surveys by the North Korean
government. On the other hand, when discussing the prospects of
economic reform, Haggard and Noland suggest that a "lack of
experience and technical capacity" (216) could be the main obstacle
for the government to reform the country, and cite the anecdote of a
North Korean official asking a World Bank representative what a bond
market is. The authors, then, assume a technically omnipotent
government, manipulating thousands of interviews during comprehensive
surveys, despite the fact that this government is supposed to lack
even basic technical knowledge. Even though the book is very well
written, it would have benefited at some points from being clearer.
In conclusion, this book is an excellent piece of work. It is highly
recommended for anybody interested in the history of famines, North
Korean studies, and specifically the great North Korean famine of the
1990s. Last but not least, I daresay, it should particularly be read
and reread by the political decision makers in Pyongyang.
References
Goodkind D, West L. 2001. The North Korean Famine and Its Demographic
Impact. Population and Development Review 27:219-238.
Lee S. 2005. Food Shortages and Economic Institutions in the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Ph.D. Thesis at University of
Warwick.
Natsios A. 2001. The Great North Korean Famine. Washington DC: United
States Institute of Peace Press.
Schloms M. 2004. North Korea and the Timeless Dilemma of Aid. Münster: LIT.
Schwekendiek D. 2007. Human Welfare in North Korea. Ph.D. Thesis at
University of Tuebingen.
Citation:
Schwekendiek, Daniel 2008
Review of _Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform_, by
Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland (2007)
_Korean Studies Review_ 2008, no. 2
Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr08-02.htm
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