According to state media, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered infrastructure improvements with farmland expansion to increase food production amidst warnings of an impending food crisis.

As the governing Workers’ Party’s powerful Central Committee concluded its seventh enlarged plenary meeting on Wednesday, Kim issued directives to revamp irrigation, build modern farming machines, and create more arable land. The meeting began on Sunday with a conversation of the “urgent” task of improving the agriculture industry.

Overview

South Korea has warned of an impending food crisis in the isolated North, with the recent increase in hunger deaths in some areas as a result of the failure of a new grain policy limiting private crop transactions.

Crop production in South Korea fell by 4% compared to the previous year, due to heavy summer rains and other economic conditions. According to the country’s rural development. Kim laid out his plans and tasks for establishing “highly civilized socialist rural communities with advanced technology and modern civilization.”

According to KCNA, he ordered a revamp irrigation system to deal with climate change and the production of efficient farming machines to modernize production accompanied by reclamation of tidelands to expand farming areas.

End Note

Since the 1980s, the mountainous country has attempted to expand arable land through tideland reclamation along its west coast, but previous efforts have failed due in part to poor engineering and maintenance.

Under Kim, regeneration projects have been comparatively more effective, but with slow progress in transforming coastal sandbanks into fertile land, they did almost nothing to ease shortages of food, the U.S.-based 38 North project said in late 2021.