From New
Eastern Outlook:
By
International law
prohibits the use of food as a weapon. However, the new sanctions declared by
the United States
drastically inhibit the ability of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
to export coal and other commodities on the international market. The new
sanctions are part of long history of the United
States attacking North Korea ’s economy and harming
its ability to provide food for the population.
Since the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991, US leaders have
continuously inhibited the ability of the DPRK to maintain its agriculture
system while simultaneously accusing the country’s leaders of “starving their
own people.”
Struggling for
Agricultural Self-Reliance
The Korean Peninsula
has been divided since 1945. The flat lands that can be used for growing food
are mainly in the southern part of the country, where tens of thousands of US
troops prop up the Republic
of Korea .
The Democratic
People’s Republic
of Korea has control of
the mountainous regions. Socialism has taken hold in the hills and
valleys where Kim Il Sung (whose name means ‘becomes the sun’) fought the
Japanese occupiers for decades as a beloved folk hero. Kim Il Sung came to lead
the Korean Worker Party which calls for Peaceful Re-Unification of the Korean Peninsula ,
and has established a centrally planned, Soviet-style economy.
While the Democratic
People’s Republic
of Korea has very little
arable land, it has plenty of mineral resources. The overwhelming majority of
the coal deposits on the Korean
Peninsula can be found in
the northern regions.
In 1953, when an armistice ended the fighting
in the Korean War, one of the greatest challenges facing the Democratic
People’s Republic
of Korea was its lack of
arable land. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the DPRK constructed a vast coal
mining and steel manufacturing apparatus. The DPRK exported coal to other
socialist countries in exchange, not just for food, but for the resources to
advance its own domestic agricultural system.
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