Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The government of North Korea (North Korea) urges its citizens to eat less until 2025. This phenomenon occurs because of the increasingly serious food crisis in the country of Kim Jong Un.
The food crisis in North Korea has been around for a long time. However, this time it was even more serious due to natural disasters, international sanctions, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to a report by South Korea’s intelligence agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered every grain of rice to be secured while pressuring agriculture to produce more rice.
While the state of about 26 million people has not reported a single case of the coronavirus and the lockdown has further restricted the movement of goods to its borders.
As the situation escalated, North Korea was reportedly forced to open up. UN agencies say the country recently allowed aid shipments, while Chinese figures show a slow increase in trade, Reuters reports.
Amid the crisis, North Koreans are reportedly being asked to “tighten their belts” until at least 2025. Some believe it is a call to starve to death.
“When the authorities tell them that they need to save and eat less food by 2025, they can do nothing but feel very hopeless,” a resident from Sinuiju city, which borders China’s Dandong, told RFA.
“Some residents say that the situation right now is so serious that they don’t know if they can survive the coming winter. They say that telling us to endure hardship until 2025 is the same as telling us to starve to death.”
However, the government is also trying to provide a solution by asking people to consume black goose as a substitute for meat. This is said to help ease the crisis. Rodong Sinmun, the state spokesman, described the waterbird meat as “delicious” and containing medicinal value.
Kim officially acknowledged Pyongyang’s food shortages in June. He called the situation “tense”. In April, it asked officials to launch a “Difficult March” to help relieve residents, according to reports BBC.
A black swan center recently opened at the Kwangpho Duck Farm in the Jongphyong area on North Korea’s east coast. But it remains to be seen how the government plans to distribute goose meat or whether other goose farms are being set up across the country.
(tfa/sef)
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