North Korean famine (the Arduous March)

Between about 1994 and 1998, North Korea suffered one of the worst famines of the late 20th century. The state's Public Distribution System, which rationed food to most of the population, broke down, and millions of people had to forage, trade or flee to survive. Estimates of the death toll range widely, from about 240,000 to several million; many researchers put it between 600,000 and 1 million out of a population of about 22 million.¹³⁴

The roots were political and economic. North Korea's collective farms depended on cheap fuel, fertilizer and machinery from the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union demanded hard currency and then collapsed in 1991, those supplies dried up, and harvests fell. Juche planning left little room to change course. Then heavy floods in the summer of 1995 destroyed crops and farmland, followed by drought. The death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994 also left his son Kim Jong Il consolidating power while prioritizing the military.¹²³

The government called the crisis the Arduous March and in 1995 appealed to the outside world for food aid. The World Food Programme and other donors sent large shipments, though access was tightly controlled. Most important, people began to rely on informal markets, called jangmadang, to buy and sell food, and the state quietly tolerated them. Tens of thousands crossed into China. The famine changed North Korean society: markets became a permanent part of life even as the regime kept its political grip.¹²³