DPRK FOOD TROUBLES AND PRC-DPRK RESPONSES: VIEWS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SHENYANG 000068

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/CM, EAP/K, PRM

E.O. 12958: DECL: TEN YEARS AFTER KOREAN UNIFICATION
TAGS: PREL PINR PGOV PREF EAGR KN KS CH
SUBJECT: DPRK FOOD TROUBLES AND PRC-DPRK RESPONSES: VIEWS
FROM THE CHINESE BORDER

REF: A. (A) SHENYANG 67

B. (B) SHENYANG 37

C. (C) 07 SHENYANG 244

D. (D) 07 SHENYANG 205

E. (E) 07 SHENYANG 178

F. (F) 07 SHENYANG 102

G. (G) 07 SHENYANG 78

H. (H) 07 SHENYANG 76

I. (I) 07 SHENYANG 31

Classified By: ACTING CONSUL GENERAL ROBERT DEWITT.
REASONS: 1.4(b)/(d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: PRC-DPRK border contacts agree that the
DPRK's food situation is more dire than in recent years,
but remain divided on the question of severity, with some
contending conditions are "not as extreme as being reported
in the West." North Korean diplomats and other officials
have acknowledged food-supply "difficulties" to a number of
our Chinese contacts. Local officials in northeastern DPRK
recently contacted an NGO source to request special aid,
citing serious difficulties this year. The North Korean
Consulate in Shenyang has apparently bolstered efforts to
solicit assistance via civilian channels. Food/monetary
assistance from Chinese relatives in northeast China;
informal cross-border trade and smuggling; and, perhaps,
off-the-books aid from local PRC border officials have
likely helped ease--though only to a limited extent--some
difficulties in parts of borderland North Korea. END
SUMMARY.


2. (C) Poloff traveled May 12-16 to Jilin Province and the
northern end of the PRC-DPRK borderlands. Sites visited
included Changchun, capital of Jilin Province; Yanji, seat
of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture; Tumen,
opposite the DPRK's Namyang; and Hunchun, near China's land
gateway to Rajin-Sonbong (Rason). This is the second in a
multi-part snapshot of the PRC-DPRK border in April/May

2008. Part one (ref A) focused on surging prices in North
Korea, squeezed aid groups there, and the impact of PRC
grain-export restrictions. Subsequent parts examine
border-crossers and the tightening border, inter alia.

PRC CONTACTS ON NORTH KOREAN FOOD TROUBLES
--------------

3. (C) PRC government scholars and border officials believe
that the DPRK's food situation this year is far more dire
than in recent years, but remain divided on the question of
magnitude. CHEN Longshan (STRICTLY PROTECT) and ZHANG
Yushan (STRICTLY PROTECT),two well-regarded North Korea
experts at the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences (JASS),
told Poloff May 12 in Changchun that they estimate a DPRK
food shortfall this year of roughly 1.5 million metric
tons, a situation causing "difficulties" internally. But
they insisted conditions in North Korea are "not as severe
as being reported in the West." (NOTE: Several contacts in
Liaoning and Jilin have told Poloff that ZHANG Feng, a
colleague of Chen and Zhang's at JASS, is currently
spearheading a classified study on the DPRK's food
situation, funded by the national Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences; it is unclear to what extent, if any, her
findings may be informing their judgments here. END NOTE.)


4. (C) Official PRC food aid remains one major factor
moderating this year's food shortages, according to the two
government researchers. Another is the role of PRC-DPRK
trade and official/unofficial border interchange--an
"important channel" that has helped "ease," though not
"resolve," difficulties, especially in the DPRK's northern
reaches, said Zhang. A senior Yanbian port-authority
official echoed similar sentiment May 15 in Yanji. His
North Korean interlocutors acknowledged that this year is
"definitely" worse than the past several years, but he
"hears"--he did not say how--that North Korean localities
close to the Chinese border are faring better than interior

SHENYANG 00000068 002 OF 004


provinces because of proximity to China. Geography,
contended the official, affords borderland areas access to
informal channels of assistance. These, the official said,
can include, inter alia: cross-border smuggling networks;
food and/or monetary donations from Yanbian-based family
members; and official or unofficial Chinese aid.


5. (C) North Korean diplomats in Shenyang acknowledged
food-supply "difficulties" during recent discussions with
the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences' LU Chao (STRICTLY
PROTECT),the DPRK expert told Poloff April 28. Lu, a
longtime Post contact and former IVLP grantee, also
maintained that his North Korean interlocutors waxed
hopeful in April about the possibility of U.S. food aid.
LIU Chensheng (STRICTLY PROTECT),a trade official-turned-
businessman who facilitates PRC investment in North Korea
via the Liaoning Civilian Entrepreneur Association's Korean
Liaison Office, confirmed North Korean talk of food
shortages. Liu told Poloff April 29 that during recent
visits of North Korean delegations to Shenyang, some of his
North Korean contacts acknowledged recent food-supply
difficulties. Details, however, have been difficult to
come by, he added.


6. (C) Tumen Foreign Affairs Office Director CUI Zhenglong
(STRICTLY PROTECT) lamented that assessing the food
situation proved difficult during his recent trips to
Namyang and Onsung County, where he met with North Korean
officials. The reluctance of his counterparts to discuss
the food situation, as well his minimal contact with local
North Korean residents there, made any meaningful judgment
elusive. He observed only that meals served by his North
Korean counterparts recently in Namyang relied heavily on
rice, with comparatively less accompanying meat or
vegetables.

WESTERN NGO CONTACTS ON NORTH KOREAN FOOD TROUBLES
-------------- --------------

7. (C) The assessments of Western NGO contacts involved
with humanitarian projects in North Korea varied similarly.
At Yanji's Yanbian University of Science and Technology
(YUST),a Western administrator involved in several of the
university's aid projects in northeastern North Korea
claimed that some borderland localities are facing food
difficulties. The administrator told Poloff May 14 that
"recently"--for the first time ever--a number of local
North Korean officials with whom the school maintains
preexisting aid projects contacted YUST directly to request
additional aid, explaining that difficulties are serious
this year. The administrator noted that even during recent
lean years, North Korean officials never contacted YUST
directly for such assistance. In Tumen, one longtime
Western resident engaged in North Korea-related
humanitarian work for several years now, claimed May 14
that he had "heard"--indirectly through friends in contact
with North Koreans--that residents in harder-hit areas are
eating only two meals a day. He had "heard" hunger
problems in the heartlands were spreading farther north,
but had no details or supporting evidence.


8. (C) A Yanbian-based, Western aid worker lately returned
from one of her many stays in Rason--where she is involved
in a humanitarian project--noted that food supply there
remained hard to gauge. Anecdotally, she related May 16
that the area's restaurants did not lack for food/customers
during very recent visits, nor did the area's markets. But
rapidly surging prices, she said, have severely eroded the
purchasing power of the project's North Koreans laborers
(ref A). When asked of food conditions outside Rason, she
replied that reliable information even among local NGOs was
difficult to obtain. A Yanji-based, Korean-speaking Amcit
recently returned from North Korea shared similar
sentiments May 14; a two-week stay in Pyongyang, he said,
offered him little sense on food problems there, except a
clear indication of rising prices in the city's food

SHENYANG 00000068 003 OF 004


markets.

NORTH KOREAN, CHINESE RESPONSES--ANECDOTALLY
--------------

9. (C) Externally, the DPRK has been responding to recent
food-supply difficulties in a number of ways, said
contacts. Most pointed to North Korean requests for
official food aid from China/other countries, as well as
exploitation of PRC-DPRK border interchange. Some
mentioned open-market procurement abroad. Others
highlighted North Korean businessmen soliciting "donations"
from private producers (e.g., in Thailand and Vietnam) to
enhance domestic supply (ref B). The North Korean
Consulate in Shenyang, meanwhile, has also bolstered its
own efforts to solicit assistance via trade and/or civilian
channels, according to LASS' Lu Chao.


10. (C) Another external source frequently mentioned is
informal cross-border food/monetary assistance from Chinese
family members. Many ethnic Koreans in Yanbian still have
family in North Korea; some ethnic Korean Chinese--like
those now in their 70s--were even born in present-day North
Korea, related one contact. China-based relatives, at
least in Yanbian, generally might offer monetary assistance
only once or twice per year, typically during cross-border
family visits, explained one Yanbian contact, a decades-
long resident of the prefecture. A typical "gift" might
range from USD 15 to USD 200 (often given in USD),
depending on the donor-family's financial health. Yanbian
families often do not have the means or perhaps the desire
to give more, noted the contact. Yanbian demographic
trends, incidentally, may not be working in North Koreans'
favor on this front, observed another contact. Because of
generational change and the significant exodus of many
young ethnic Koreans from borderland Jilin to other Chinese
provinces or even South Korea seeking employment
opportunities, younger generations of Chinese Koreans, he
speculated, may eventually harbor more shallow emotional
ties than earlier generations to DPRK-based family members.


11. (C) Some PRC border officials in the past have been
able to donate limited quantities of food to DPRK
localities informally without reporting to Beijing, but
Poloff was unable to confirm whether this has occurred in
recent months. A well-positioned senior Yanbian official
with direct experience on this front declined to confirm
whether prefectural officials shipped off-the-books
assistance across the border over the past several months,
but in discussions in Yanji May 15, he confirmed the
practice in general terms and offered a hypothetical
"example" of past transactions. Speaking hypothetically,
the official mentioned that Yanbian Prefecture's Party
Secretary or government chief, while visiting a local North
Korean mayor or provincial governor across the border,
might bring along "a few tons" of grain, or fuel to leave
behind in a face-saving manner that would not offend the
North Koreans. Offering limited quantities is possible,
but Chinese border officials cannot finesse giving "lots,"
said the official, explaining that they must not pique
Beijing's ire by undercutting PRC policy toward the DPRK.



12. (C) Unofficial cross-border trade and/or smuggling, at
times benignly neglected by the PRC, remains another
external source easing North Korean food difficulties,
according to contacts in Shenyang, Yanji and Changchun.
LASS' Lu Chao, for instance, contended that Chinese
officials in the borderlands overlook smuggling, in part
because they are simply unable to control it.
Paradoxically, despite its highly destabilizing impact
(e.g., cross-border human smuggling, drug trafficking),
smuggling of food and other items also helps reinforce
stability on the North Korean side, a point not lost on the
DPRK or PRC officials, said Lu. Corroborating previous
post reporting on cross-border smuggling (refs C-I),Lu, a

SHENYANG 00000068 004 OF 004


Korea specialist who has researched border-security issues
in depth, pointed to the North Korean military's prominent
role in cross-border smuggling near Dandong and Sinuiju.
Lu also claimed that a number of North Korean government
departments (e.g., Ministry of Education) also have their
own cross-border smuggling networks, which they use to
procure food from China. Yanbian contacts emphasized,
however, that because most cross-border smuggling is
limited in quantity, its impact--while most likely helping
"ease" difficulties in certain border areas--is still
limited.
DEWITT