A corn shortage in North Korea and a bumper harvest across the border in China have triggered an active grain smuggling business, a Chinese official said yesterday, even as legal trade also soars.
International food agencies have warned that North Korea faces an increased risk of famine this year and next as it is unable to supply itself with enough grain even in a good year.
Denuded hillsides make the isolated country vulnerable to flooding, while a deterioration in infrastructure can compound the effects of drought.
“The drought in North Korea was very serious and there is a lot of corn smuggling from China into North Korea,” said Zhu Yehui (祝業輝), the head of the grains bureau of Jilin, the province bordering North Korea. “The price in North Korea is more than 10 times the domestic price in China.”
China effectively stopped exporting corn and wheat at the beginning of this year to control domestic inflation, but makes an exception for North Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
According to Chinese customs data, exports of corn to North Korea soared to 97,606 tonnes in the first seven months of the year, a rise of 564 percent.
North Korean imports were strong in the late winter, implying that last year’s harvest was insufficient, dipped in the spring, and then rose to 37,111 tonnes in June, the highest monthly level this year.
North Korea accounted for almost all of China’s corn exports this summer. Last month China exported 30,000 tonnes of corn, although the amount sent to North Korea has not yet been released.
The UN World Food Programme said earlier this month that China’s restrictions on grains exports hampered its ability to source grain for North Korea from China.
Meanwhile, the UN command in South Korea said it has handed over the body of a North Korean soldier found near the border dividing the two Koreas.
UN command spokesman Kim Yong-kyu says the body was turned over yesterday at the truce village of Panmunjom. The village lies inside the Demilitarized Zone.
Kim says South Korean soldiers found the body near a dam in the eastern South Korean province of Gangwon on Sept. 2 still dressed in a North Korean military uniform.
The body was drifting in a river that flows across the heavily fortified frontier and the cause of death was unclear, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Bodies of North Korean soldiers and civilians have occasionally been found in rivers near the border, some of them believed to have been victims of flooding.
The US-led UN Command oversees the armistice that ended the Korean War.
The two countries technically remain at war.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS