Thread by @BonicMichael

"This year, North Korea could face food shortages of up to 1.35 million tons…[It's] food requirements are about 5.75 million tons annually."
wsj.com/articles/kim-j…
Despite the struggles, few experts expect that North Korea is on the brink of a famine, like...in the 1990s.”

2/

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1418028996806148096?s=20

3/The media's claims of North Korea's economy being in its "“worst-ever” economic situation" are simply distortions of reality, which these 2 charts accurately represent👇:

4/Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein sheds light on the situation:

Some brief thoughts about North Korea’s food situation, late June 2021
nkeconwatch.com/category/agric…
“By all accounts, the current food situation in North Korea appears difficult…A few brief thoughts:

First, it’s important

5/"to keep in mind when hearing phrases such as “worst in a decade” that North Korea went through an actual famine in the 1990s and early 2000s. So that the food situation has gotten better over the last decade, while the country was arguably still rebounding from the famine,

6/"should not come as a surprise.

Second, it’s difficult to tell precisely how bad things are. Food production estimates, though only approximations, paint a picture of relative shortage compared to the past few years, but still not near disaster levels…”

7/Kim Jong-un’s claim of the “worst-ever situation”
[April 18th, 2021]
“…it has been puzzling to see the media reporting on Kim Jong-un’s claim that North Korea faces its “worst-ever” economic situation at the moment, under both international sanctions and a self-imposed border

8/"lockdown.

It seems that Kim’s words have been misinterpreted or lost in translation. Colleagues at 38 North have rightly and importantly pointed out that the original Korean-language statement is not nearly as drastic…

None of this means that the situation is not bad. But

9/"“worst-ever” would be extremely drastic for a country where the failings of the economic system led to a famine in the 1990s and early 2000s that took the lives of between 600,000-1.5 million people. Today’s conditions simply aren’t grave enough to warrant such comparisons.

10/"Precisely how difficult conditions are remains hard to tell."

The food shortages and economic hardship are indeed making things “very hard” or even “extremely difficult”, in the relative sense compared to the last few years, but it's egregiously wrong to say "worst ever"

11/implying as bad as or worse than the famine (Arduous March) of the 1990s following USSR's collapse, which is factually FALSE.

"But Kim said so himself."

Actually no he didn't, those are the words of the translators.

Lost in translation: The “term read kuknanhan (극난한),

12/which would be better translated as “very hard” or even “extremely difficult””, was translated into, “the worst-ever situation”.

When original text isn’t “faithfully translated”, its original meaning is lost or distorted by translators & paraphrasers, whose free use of

13/words/phrases, esp. when politics is involved, can even change its meaning to fit a political narrative. What a gross distortion it is to say that Kim Jong Un is saying North Korea is in its “the worst-ever situation”. He said things are “very hard” or “extremely difficult”.

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