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RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC
RHMFISS/SACINCUNC SEOUL KOR
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC 0102
RHMFISS/SECNAV WASHDC 0006
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 0543
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0025

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SHENYANG 000068 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EAP/CM, EAP/K, PRM 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: TEN YEARS AFTER KOREAN UNIFICATION 
TAGS: PREL PINR PGOV PREF EAGR KN KS CH
SUBJECT: DPRK FOOD TROUBLES AND PRC-DPRK RESPONSES: VIEWS 
FROM THE CHINESE BORDER 
 
REF: A. (A) SHENYANG 67 
     ¶B. (B) SHENYANG 37 
     ¶C. (C) 07 SHENYANG 244 
     ¶D. (D) 07 SHENYANG 205 
     ¶E. (E) 07 SHENYANG 178 
     ¶F. (F) 07 SHENYANG 102 
     ¶G. (G) 07 SHENYANG 78 
     ¶H. (H) 07 SHENYANG 76 
     ¶I. (I) 07 SHENYANG 31 
 
Classified By: ACTING CONSUL GENERAL ROBERT DEWITT. 
REASONS: 1.4(b)/(d). 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY: PRC-DPRK border contacts agree that the 
DPRK's food situation is more dire than in recent years, 
but remain divided on the question of severity, with some 
contending conditions are "not as extreme as being reported 
in the West."  North Korean diplomats and other officials 
have acknowledged food-supply "difficulties" to a number of 
our Chinese contacts.  Local officials in northeastern DPRK 
recently contacted an NGO source to request special aid, 
citing serious difficulties this year.  The North Korean 
Consulate in Shenyang has apparently bolstered efforts to 
solicit assistance via civilian channels.  Food/monetary 
assistance from Chinese relatives in northeast China; 
informal cross-border trade and smuggling; and, perhaps, 
off-the-books aid from local PRC border officials have 
likely helped ease--though only to a limited extent--some 
difficulties in parts of borderland North Korea.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (C) Poloff traveled May 12-16 to Jilin Province and the 
northern end of the PRC-DPRK borderlands.  Sites visited 
included Changchun, capital of Jilin Province; Yanji, seat 
of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture; Tumen, 
opposite the DPRK's Namyang; and Hunchun, near China's land 
gateway to Rajin-Sonbong (Rason).  This is the second in a 
multi-part snapshot of the PRC-DPRK border in April/May 
¶2008.  Part one (ref A) focused on surging prices in North 
Korea, squeezed aid groups there, and the impact of PRC 
grain-export restrictions.  Subsequent parts examine 
border-crossers and the tightening border, inter alia. 
 
PRC CONTACTS ON NORTH KOREAN FOOD TROUBLES 
------------------------------------------ 
¶3. (C) PRC government scholars and border officials believe 
that the DPRK's food situation this year is far more dire 
than in recent years, but remain divided on the question of 
magnitude.  CHEN Longshan (STRICTLY PROTECT) and ZHANG 
Yushan (STRICTLY PROTECT), two well-regarded North Korea 
experts at the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences (JASS), 
told Poloff May 12 in Changchun that they estimate a DPRK 
food shortfall this year of roughly 1.5 million metric 
tons, a situation causing "difficulties" internally.  But 
they insisted conditions in North Korea are "not as severe 
as being reported in the West."  (NOTE: Several contacts in 
Liaoning and Jilin have told Poloff that ZHANG Feng, a 
colleague of Chen and Zhang's at JASS, is currently 
spearheading a classified study on the DPRK's food 
situation, funded by the national Chinese Academy of Social 
Sciences; it is unclear to what extent, if any, her 
findings may be informing their judgments here. END NOTE.) 
 
¶4. (C) Official PRC food aid remains one major factor 
moderating this year's food shortages, according to the two 
government researchers.  Another is the role of PRC-DPRK 
trade and official/unofficial border interchange--an 
"important channel" that has helped "ease," though not 
"resolve," difficulties, especially in the DPRK's northern 
reaches, said Zhang.  A senior Yanbian port-authority 
official echoed similar sentiment May 15 in Yanji.  His 
North Korean interlocutors acknowledged that this year is 
"definitely" worse than the past several years, but he 
"hears"--he did not say how--that North Korean localities 
close to the Chinese border are faring better than interior 
 
SHENYANG 00000068  002 OF 004 
 
 
provinces because of proximity to China.  Geography, 
contended the official, affords borderland areas access to 
informal channels of assistance.  These, the official said, 
can include, inter alia: cross-border smuggling networks; 
food and/or monetary donations from Yanbian-based family 
members; and official or unofficial Chinese aid. 
 
¶5. (C) North Korean diplomats in Shenyang acknowledged 
food-supply "difficulties" during recent discussions with 
the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences' LU Chao (STRICTLY 
PROTECT), the DPRK expert told Poloff April 28.  Lu, a 
longtime Post contact and former IVLP grantee, also 
maintained that his North Korean interlocutors waxed 
hopeful in April about the possibility of U.S. food aid. 
LIU Chensheng (STRICTLY PROTECT), a trade official-turned- 
businessman who facilitates PRC investment in North Korea 
via the Liaoning Civilian Entrepreneur Association's Korean 
Liaison Office, confirmed North Korean talk of food 
shortages.  Liu told Poloff April 29 that during recent 
visits of North Korean delegations to Shenyang, some of his 
North Korean contacts acknowledged recent food-supply 
difficulties.  Details, however, have been difficult to 
come by, he added. 
 
¶6. (C) Tumen Foreign Affairs Office Director CUI Zhenglong 
(STRICTLY PROTECT) lamented that assessing the food 
situation proved difficult during his recent trips to 
Namyang and Onsung County, where he met with North Korean 
officials.  The reluctance of his counterparts to discuss 
the food situation, as well his minimal contact with local 
North Korean residents there, made any meaningful judgment 
elusive.  He observed only that meals served by his North 
Korean counterparts recently in Namyang relied heavily on 
rice, with comparatively less accompanying meat or 
vegetables. 
 
WESTERN NGO CONTACTS ON NORTH KOREAN FOOD TROUBLES 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
¶7. (C) The assessments of Western NGO contacts involved 
with humanitarian projects in North Korea varied similarly. 
At Yanji's Yanbian University of Science and Technology 
(YUST), a Western administrator involved in several of the 
university's aid projects in northeastern North Korea 
claimed that some borderland localities are facing food 
difficulties.  The administrator told Poloff May 14 that 
"recently"--for the first time ever--a number of local 
North Korean officials with whom the school maintains 
preexisting aid projects contacted YUST directly to request 
additional aid, explaining that difficulties are serious 
this year.  The administrator noted that even during recent 
lean years, North Korean officials never contacted YUST 
directly for such assistance.  In Tumen, one longtime 
Western resident engaged in North Korea-related 
humanitarian work for several years now, claimed May 14 
that he had "heard"--indirectly through friends in contact 
with North Koreans--that residents in harder-hit areas are 
eating only two meals a day.  He had "heard" hunger 
problems in the heartlands were spreading farther north, 
but had no details or supporting evidence. 
 
¶8. (C) A Yanbian-based, Western aid worker lately returned 
from one of her many stays in Rason--where she is involved 
in a humanitarian project--noted that food supply there 
remained hard to gauge.  Anecdotally, she related May 16 
that the area's restaurants did not lack for food/customers 
during very recent visits, nor did the area's markets.  But 
rapidly surging prices, she said, have severely eroded the 
purchasing power of the project's North Koreans laborers 
(ref A).  When asked of food conditions outside Rason, she 
replied that reliable information even among local NGOs was 
difficult to obtain.  A Yanji-based, Korean-speaking Amcit 
recently returned from North Korea shared similar 
sentiments May 14; a two-week stay in Pyongyang, he said, 
offered him little sense on food problems there, except a 
clear indication of rising prices in the city's food 
 
SHENYANG 00000068  003 OF 004 
 
 
markets. 
 
NORTH KOREAN, CHINESE RESPONSES--ANECDOTALLY 
-------------------------------------------- 
¶9. (C) Externally, the DPRK has been responding to recent 
food-supply difficulties in a number of ways, said 
contacts.  Most pointed to North Korean requests for 
official food aid from China/other countries, as well as 
exploitation of PRC-DPRK border interchange.  Some 
mentioned open-market procurement abroad.  Others 
highlighted North Korean businessmen soliciting "donations" 
from private producers (e.g., in Thailand and Vietnam) to 
enhance domestic supply (ref B).  The North Korean 
Consulate in Shenyang, meanwhile, has also bolstered its 
own efforts to solicit assistance via trade and/or civilian 
channels, according to LASS' Lu Chao. 
 
¶10. (C) Another external source frequently mentioned is 
informal cross-border food/monetary assistance from Chinese 
family members.  Many ethnic Koreans in Yanbian still have 
family in North Korea; some ethnic Korean Chinese--like 
those now in their 70s--were even born in present-day North 
Korea, related one contact.  China-based relatives, at 
least in Yanbian, generally might offer monetary assistance 
only once or twice per year, typically during cross-border 
family visits, explained one Yanbian contact, a decades- 
long resident of the prefecture.  A typical "gift" might 
range from USD 15 to USD 200 (often given in USD), 
depending on the donor-family's financial health.  Yanbian 
families often do not have the means or perhaps the desire 
to give more, noted the contact.  Yanbian demographic 
trends, incidentally, may not be working in North Koreans' 
favor on this front, observed another contact.  Because of 
generational change and the significant exodus of many 
young ethnic Koreans from borderland Jilin to other Chinese 
provinces or even South Korea seeking employment 
opportunities, younger generations of Chinese Koreans, he 
speculated, may eventually harbor more shallow emotional 
ties than earlier generations to DPRK-based family members. 
 
¶11. (C) Some PRC border officials in the past have been 
able to donate limited quantities of food to DPRK 
localities informally without reporting to Beijing, but 
Poloff was unable to confirm whether this has occurred in 
recent months.  A well-positioned senior Yanbian official 
with direct experience on this front declined to confirm 
whether prefectural officials shipped off-the-books 
assistance across the border over the past several months, 
but in discussions in Yanji May 15, he confirmed the 
practice in general terms and offered a hypothetical 
"example" of past transactions.  Speaking hypothetically, 
the official mentioned that Yanbian Prefecture's Party 
Secretary or government chief, while visiting a local North 
Korean mayor or provincial governor across the border, 
might bring along "a few tons" of grain, or fuel to leave 
behind in a face-saving manner that would not offend the 
North Koreans.  Offering limited quantities is possible, 
but Chinese border officials cannot finesse giving "lots," 
said the official, explaining that they must not pique 
Beijing's ire by undercutting PRC policy toward the DPRK. 
 
 
¶12. (C) Unofficial cross-border trade and/or smuggling, at 
times benignly neglected by the PRC, remains another 
external source easing North Korean food difficulties, 
according to contacts in Shenyang, Yanji and Changchun. 
LASS' Lu Chao, for instance, contended that Chinese 
officials in the borderlands overlook smuggling, in part 
because they are simply unable to control it. 
Paradoxically, despite its highly destabilizing impact 
(e.g., cross-border human smuggling, drug trafficking), 
smuggling  of food and other items also helps reinforce 
stability on the North Korean side, a point not lost on the 
DPRK or PRC officials, said Lu.  Corroborating previous 
post reporting on cross-border smuggling (refs C-I), Lu, a 
 
SHENYANG 00000068  004 OF 004 
 
 
Korea specialist who has researched border-security issues 
in depth, pointed to the North Korean military's prominent 
role in cross-border smuggling near Dandong and Sinuiju. 
Lu also claimed that a number of North Korean government 
departments (e.g., Ministry of Education) also have their 
own cross-border smuggling networks, which they use to 
procure food from China.  Yanbian contacts emphasized, 
however, that because most cross-border smuggling is 
limited in quantity, its impact--while most likely helping 
"ease" difficulties in certain border areas--is still 
limited. 
DEWITT