Recent satellite imagery analysis has revealed that rice production in Ansok Tideland, Onchon county, South Pyongan province, was not particularly good. Ansok Tideland was where about 270 hectares of farmland were flooded with seawater when the dikes were breached by Typhoon Khanun and heavy rains in August 2023. North Korea has been pushing hard to reclaim the tidelands as part of its “Find New Land Campaign” to increase agricultural land. When the dikes broke last summer, flooding the Ansok Tideland – which had been painstakingly reclaimed from the sea – with seawater, an enraged Kim Jong Un rushed to the area and roughed up officials, a scene reported by North Korean media with accompanying photos.
North Korea quickly repaired about 100 meters of the fallen dikes and restored the rice fields after pumping out the seawater and desalinating the soil. North Korea planted the fields this spring despite concerns that it had rushed the desalination process, but recent analysis of satellite imagery suggests that the rice did not grow particularly well.
I recently analyzed photos taken by NASA’s Landsat-9 satellite. The resolution of the satellite imagery used to analyze rice growth on Ansok Tideland was improved from 30 meters to 15 meters by using the resolution merge technique, which applies Band 8 (15 meter resolution) to the Landsat-9 imagery.
Poor rice growth at Ansok Tideland
Looking at the Ansok Tideland area in the Landsat-9 images of Aug. 28, we see a long line of pale rice fields along the coast on the left. The soil beds are exposed because the rice fields have been damaged so that rice will not grow there. Farmers did not plant rice in these paddies, or the seedlings did not take root and died. We also see dark green fields – almost black – here and there. These paddies appear dark because the rice is growing poorly. Paddies where the rice is growing normally are light green.
To determine the state of rice growth in the tidal flats, I took a close look at the area using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) analysis. According to the NDVI analysis, rice was growing normally on 388 hectares of the 634 hectares of Ansok Tideland, or 61%. In contrast, rice did not grow at all on 118 hectares of damaged farmland, or 19%, while rice growth was stunted on the remaining 128 hectares, or 20%. There is concern that the damaged rice fields will not produce any rice this fall, while the fields with poor rice growth may produce less than half the usual crop. Ansok Tideland’s fall harvest is estimated to be about 30% to 40% below target.
This summer, villages in the Yalu River basin disappeared and heavy rains in late July caused human losses, but the central regions of the country – including Ansok Tideland – were not affected. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted that the flood damage around Sinuiju would have little impact on North Korea’s harvest this fall, given the country’s climate and vegetation growth.
In its “North Korea MY 2024/25 Seasonal Crop Outlook and Excess Rainfall and Flood-Related Analysis,” released on Aug. 22, the USDA predicted that North Korea’s harvest this year would be similar to last year’s. Specifically, it predicted it would be 8% higher than the 2022 harvest, but 1% lower than the average harvest over the past five years. The USDA also said that the fall climate would not be in North Korea’s favor, with higher than normal temperatures and more frequent rain in September and October.
The Korean Peninsula has entered a season of high, bright skies and fields full of ripening grains, including rice. This is a time when just looking at the heavily laden rice glowing golden in the fields should foretell a bountiful harvest. At such a time, the warm autumn sunlight helps the ripening grain. Now, rain and typhoons are unwelcome guests, and bad weather forecasts will hurt the fall harvest. We can only hope that typhoons and other severe weather phenomena will stay away from the Korean Peninsula this fall.