North Korea's premier calls for enhancing irrigation amid food shortages

This photo, carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, May 7, shows North Korean Premier Kim Tok-hun, center, inspecting a farm in Singye County of the North Hwanghae Province. Yonhap

North Korea's premier has inspected regional farms and called for enhancing an irrigation system to cope with droughts and heat waves, state media reported Tuesday, amid the country's chronic food shortages.

Premier Kim Tok-hun visited farms in the South Pyongan, North Hwanghae and Jagang provinces and checked the agricultural situation, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Kim called for "ramping up irrigation works qualitatively in a bid to timely deal with abnormal climate such as droughts and high temperature," the KCNA said.

The Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper, said Tuesday that the very existence of the country relies on the success of farming as the rice planting season started.

"People should practically contribute to achieving the goal of grain production and increasing agricultural output," the newspaper said, praising the Korean People's Army for improving the situation on farms.

North Korea is known for chronic food shortages that have been apparently aggravated in recent years by global sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs, unfavorable weather and yearslong border lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The North's crop production is estimated to have increased 310,000 tons on-year to 4.82 million tons last year, according to South Korea's Rural Development Administration.

But it was still below 5.76 million tons, the annual amount that the North needs to feed its people, according to a projection by the Food and Agriculture Organization for the North.

Last month, Ri Chol-man, chief of the North's state agricultural commission, visited Russia amid deepening bilateral cooperation with Moscow and the North's food woes.

Ri said his country had sown wheat seats, provided by Russian specialists earlier in April, in several counties near Pyongyang and northern provinces in order to determine the most suitable wheat varieties for cultivation in the North, the Russian Embassy in North Korea said on its Facebook page. (Yonhap)