Corn prices in North Korean markets have recently fallen after skyrocketing for some time. Moreover, with the market price of rice fluctuating from region to region, provincial price gaps have widened.
According to Daily NK’s regular survey of market prices in North Korea, the price of a kilogram of corn in one market in Pyongyang was KPW 2,700 as of May 12. Compared to the cost of KPW 3,100 during the previous survey on April 28, the price had plummeted 12.9% in just two weeks.
Although the price of corn dropped the most in Pyongyang, it also fell in other regions, including Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province and Hyesan, Yanggang Province.
In Hyesan, the price of corn in one market fell 5.7% between April 28 and May 12, dropping to KPW 3,300 a kilogram. The cost of corn dropped by a similar amount in Sinuiju.
Though the price of corn fell less precipitously in Hyesan and Sinuiju compared to Pyongyang, the regions have seen corn prices drop the most since the start of the year.
The release of corn stores by farmers to exhaust their built-up supplies of old corn before the wheat and barley harvest in June appears to have driven the fall in market prices.
“Storing corn for a long time is hard when the weather gets hot,” said a source in North Korea, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If weevils begin to infest the germs of the corn kernels, it’s a major problem, so farmers are releasing their old stores of corn before the summer arrives.”
Another factor behind the drop in corn prices is that government agencies provided corn to mobilized workers for the rice planting season. This year, many enterprises reportedly provided corn to ensure a labor supply for the planting season.
The source said this was because if enterprises did not provide corn, people would say they “could not support agricultural communities because they had nothing to eat” or were “too weak to work because they could not prepare a boxed lunch.”
Meanwhile, the market price of rice in North Korea has either held steady or even climbed in some regions.
The price of a kilogram of rice in one market in Pyongyang was KPW 5,530 as of May 12, just KPW 30 higher than in the previous survey on March 28. However, in Hyesan, a kilogram of rice cost KPW 6,500 on May 12, 3.17% higher than two weeks earlier.
This was the first time the price of rice had climbed above KPW 6,500 since June 2021, when the city was put in lockdown due to suspected COVID-19 cases.
With the price of rice holding steady in Pyongyang while climbing in Hyesan, the price gap between the two regions has once again grown.
In late March, the price of rice was KPW 5,300 in Pyongyang and KPW 6,200 in Hyesan, a gap of KPW 900. In April, the cost of rice climbed slightly in Pyongyang while falling somewhat in Hyesan, seemingly closing the gap, but as of mid-May, the gap had widened once again to nearly KPW 1,000.
The market price of rice in North Korea has climbed since December of last year due to supply shortages. The current price is higher than between 2020 and 2020, when rice imports plummeted with the closure of the border due to COVID-19, and is similar to 2023’s prices.
In a telephone call with Daily NK, Cho Chung-hee, the director of Good Farmers’ research institute and an expert on North Korean agriculture, said spring “is a time of severe food shortages before potatoes, wheat and barley are harvested in late June.” He projected that more North Koreans will suffer immediate hardship due to food shortages “unless food imports are expanded.”
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May 21, 2024 at 12:30PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)