North Korea’s ruling party kicks off meeting on agriculture

Seoul, Feb 27 (EFE).- North Korea’s ruling party kicked off an important meeting to discuss agricultural issues amid fears of food shortages in the isolated country, state media reported Monday.

Leader Kim Jong-un chaired the 7th plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang on Sunday, state news agency KCNA said.

This somewhat exceptional meeting – the party held one just two months ago and usually convenes two plenary sessions a year, the first of them in mid-spring – comes at a time when the food situation appears to have deteriorated in the impoverished country.

In December’s plenary session, the party established grain production as the country’s highest economic priority.

Strict border closures imposed to prevent the entry of Covid-19, the weather conditions and international sanctions seem to be behind an apparent drop in the country’s agricultural yields.

Two members of the Presidium of the party’s Political Bureau, Kim Tok-hun and Jo Yong-won, were also present at the meeting.

“The meeting will analyze and review the work for 2022, the first year of implementing the program for the rural revolution in the new era,” KCNA said.

The session will also “decide on the immediate important tasks and the urgent tasks arising at the present stage of the national economic development and the practical ways for implementing them,” it added.

Those attending the session, whose duration has not been specified, unanimously approved the items on the meeting’s agenda and began to discuss the first one, KCNA said.

Recently, the South Korean Ministry of Unification, in charge of ties with the North, pointed out, without offering specific data, that the food situation in the neighboring country seemed to be worsening, with deaths from starvation in some regions.

North Korea, which suffers from endemic malnutrition, faced a severe famine in the mid to late 1990s that is believed to have killed more than 3 million people in the country. EFE

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