As of: January 28, 2024, 11:57 a.m
By: Sophia Lother
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Kim Jong-Un during his visit to Russia in September 2023. © Sven Simon/Imago
Instead of military threats: Kim Jong-un is now making a surprising admission about the situation in North Korea.
What's going on there?
Pyongyang - North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un usually attracts attention with his aggressive bluster and his military threatening gestures.
Most recently, North Korea provoked by firing more and more cruise missiles, as the South Korean military reported.
This had “nothing to do with the regional situation,” as the state news agency
KCNA
announced.
Nevertheless, relations with South Korea are currently at a low point.
The close cooperation with Russian head of state Vladimir Putin also repeatedly makes headlines.
Arms deals between the two countries are in full swing.
But Russian soldiers don't always seem happy with North Korea's weapons.
Now Kim Jong-un is not making noise, but rather the exact opposite.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un makes a surprising admission
The North Korean ruler is said to have made surprisingly meek comments at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).
The meeting was reported not only by the North Korean newspaper
Rodong Sinmun
, which is considered an organ of the party under the Kim family, but also by South Korean media such as
Hankyoreh
.
Kim Jong-un is quoted as saying that there is a “terrible situation” in large parts of North Korea.
He also pointed out in his speech a “severe imbalance and wide disparity” between more rural and urban areas.
The dictator continued that the provision of the “most basic goods” to people in rural areas was “insufficient.”
Surprising words, so far the famine that has been raging in North Korea for a long time has only rarely been discussed.
Now troops from the People's Army are apparently to be deployed to help build factories in the provinces.
Hunger as a weapon in North Korea: Expert with sharp criticism of Kim Jong-un
Why are so many people still starving in North Korea, an industrialized nuclear weapons state?
Lee Sung-yoon, Korea expert at Tufts University in the US state of Massachusetts, has clear words about this in an interview.
Since Corona, the border with China has been closed and important goods are missing.
At the same time, the state controls agriculture and therefore who gets something to eat.
“The problem was never that there wasn’t enough food,” Lee explains.
Food is being hoarded in the capital to keep the elite happy.
He suspects that the government is planning to "have foreign countries close this gap in food supplies so that they can spend enough billions on nuclear weapons."