Anyone think even a little of the food sent from the US and other countries reaches the civilian population? I would say 100% of it goes to the army. Why wouldn’t it? I don’t think the North Koreans really allow food distribution to be watched by international observers. I’ve heard they let UN personnel watch them bring food to civilians only to go collect it after the UN leaves the area.
I think you summed it up well. I suppose there are some people classified as civilians that have valued skills or knowledge, and they also get some food. But you don’t maintain an empire based on extortion by feeding people you don’t need.
Google is your friend 
From here:
“Earlier this month, Amos attributed the funding shortage to Western concerns that food aid will be diverted to the North Korean military and not reach those most in need. She said monitoring has improved in the past year, however, with the North allowing random visits and the use of Korean-speaking staff for the first time.”
I read sentence or two in The Economist of late that touched on this. The PDRK wants grains sent to them. These can be processed into any sort of food they want, including food suitable for military use. The USA (under the recent, now-suspended agreement) would send only nutrition biscuits (or somesuch) that were plainly food aid. (I wonder if they had “God Bless America” embossed on them.) These biscuits were less-appropriate for military use.
Food is not a product like cars or blu ray players that it can be distributed to some and not to others.If you send over tonnes of food it will help civilians even if none of what you send actually ends up being eaten by them as the arrival of supplies from overseas means that existing domestic supplies can be used less parsimoniously.
I don’t know where you get the idea that distribution of food can only be distributed to all or none. You’re also missing the idea that the problem with North Korea is that there is very little, and I mean very little, “existing domestic supplies.” That’s not even considering the variety, or lack thereof, available domestically. North Korea is a failed stated in more ways than one.
He has a point though, if there was no food aid, the meagre and low quality domestic production would go to the military and non-key civilians would get nothing.
But if you add food aid to the equation, there will be more food left over once the military eat their fill and thus more for the civilians.
And yes, domestic production isn’t zero. They might not have the working tractors or fertiliser they once had, but they still have lots of agricultural workers, access to twentieth century science and a climate that allowed Northern Korea to be populated for millenia, abet at a lower population.
You don’t need total crop failure to have a famine.
From what I’ve read, even much of their military is going hungry.
Wow, that is interesting. Where have you read that?
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. Even if the military eats all the food aid, they aren’t then eating as much from other sources, leaving more from the rest of the population. At least until Kim-Jong-un decrees that he has the perfect figure, and his cronies convert the aid into fat.
You’re assuming that the NK regime doesn’t want its civilians to starve.
The civilian population still exists, so they must be eating something. What is the domestic food production like? Are there modern industrial-scale farms run by the state that produce food for civilians, or is it more like every family surviving on whatever they can grow at home?
Remember that about 2 years ago someone tried to blow up the dear leader’s train as he returned from China. (they missed). All is not sweetness and light over there.
The trick in any of these dictatorships is to prevent enough people from getting together and coming up with joint actions; particularly, the ones at the top with the resources to order others to act. According to the articles when Kim-3 took over, he was being mentored by his uncles and others to navigate this interesting maze of competing factions.
Whether food aid can make much of a difference is a good question. Food for tens of millions of people is a lot of food. Where (other than the military) are you going to find the trucks, fuel, and manpower on short notice to move this stuff? One analysis I recall during the leadership transition was very interesting - it suggested that infrastructure and even control was very poor in the northeast of the country, far away from any interfering foreign access. To conserve resources for important areas, that part of the country was effectively written off and left as a medieval backwater. So even if there was food ai coming in, would they have the roads and vehicles and knowledge of the population distribution to actually give out the food aid in some areas?
I rather doubt they want to starve their population, at least those not in Gulags.
Thanks, those are very interesting articles.
Why do you doubt that? There are a lot of N. Koreans who serve no purpose in maintaining the regime. Why would they want to waste limited resources on those people?
They have to get the people they have uses for from somewhere.
Not to mention the military turns around and sells it on the black market.
Except North Korea has demonstrated on several occaisions it’s perfectly willing to fatally starve segments of its population not immediately and directly useful.