A review of " The Famine That Never Was - the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the ‘ Arduous March ‘ period" by a British writer and political activist

The famine that never was: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the ‘Arduous March’ period, by Dermot Hudson, Juche Society, 2021

This useful publication demolishes the big lie that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea suffered from a famine that killed up to three million people in the 1990s. The lie is a key part of the US/British propaganda campaign designed to discredit and eventually overthrow the government of that country.

In the early 1990s, Yeltsin’s counter-revolutionary government in Russia tore up its trade agreements with the DPRK. Then China, a major trading partner of the DPRK, demanded that the DPRK settle foreign trade accounts in dollars. The USA and its allies tightened their blockade of the DPRK. In the mid-1990s the DPRK suffered several consecutive years of natural disasters: floods in 1995 and 1996, a drought in 1997. 

In a socialist society there may be natural disasters which cause temporary decreases in food production, but unlike capitalist societies where any food shortages would be made worse by hoarding, speculation and profiteering, socialist countries can ensure fair distribution of limited resources so that everyone gets enough. Planning the economy and controlling prices mitigates the effects of losses caused by natural disasters.

 In June 1996, a delegation of the Juche Idea Study of England visited the DPRK. If the media reports about the DPRK were true, when these eyewitnesses were in Pyongyang they would have seen people collapsing from hunger in the streets, and people begging for food, rummaging in dustbins for food, as one could see any day in, say, downtown Detroit. Nobody was queuing for food, nobody was besieging food banks. When the delegates travelled through many of the country’s rural areas, they saw no signs of crop failures, no starving people, no famine.

                   

The people of the DPRK are resilient. They coped with the natural disasters, just as they had coped with the far greater devastation caused by the US war of Aggression of 1950-1953. In that genocidal attack, US forces killed over 1.2 million people and destroyed over two million homes, over 28,000 schools, and over 50,000 factories. They destroyed railways, roads, bridges, reservoirs and dams, causing huge human, material and environmental damage. The people of the DPRK rebuilt their country, despite the continued US hostility and blockade.

They continued to provide high levels of social support, including virtually free housing, free education, free health care and low-cost food provision; there were no cuts or austerity.

Dr Hudson cites the World Bank figures for the DPRK’s population - 20.29 million in 1990, and 22.93 million in 2000, an increase of 2.64 million. The Worldometer site showed that the population increased by over a million between 1995 and 2000. Hardly likely if the country had indeed suffered a massive famine in those years. 

https://www.lulu.com/shop/dermot-hudson/the-famine-that-never-was-the-democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-in-the-arduous-march-period/paperback/product-6wr5kd.html?page=1&pageSize=4