The country’s Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Kim during remarks at a plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s central committee urged officials to figure out ways to increase agricultural production amid an expected impending food deficit, according to The Associated Press.
The AP added that the state news agency noted that Kim also”put forth the tasks for the nation to maintain flawless anti-epidemic state,” signaling the North Korean leader could be extending the country’s pandemic lockdown.
While Kim explained that total industrial output in the country had increased by 25 percent in the year before, he added there was”a succession of deviations” in the party’s plans to improve the market.
“The people’s food situation is currently getting tense as the agricultural sector failed to meet its grain production strategy due to this harm by typhoon last year,” he explained during the assembly, according to Reuters.
Kim along with other party leaders at the meeting recommitted to elements of the five-year plan to enhance the nation’s economy that was unveiled earlier this season.
In addition to growing agricultural production, Kim has also called for further development to North Korea’s chemical and metal industries, which have been hit hard by continuing international sanctions, in addition to export suspensions throughout the pandemic.
While it is difficult to assess the real reality of present conditions in North Korea, whose government keeps tight control over information leaving the country, South Korean authorities think tank Korea Development Institute predicted last month that food shortages in North Korea this year might total up to approximately 1 million tons.
During the initial ruling party congress in five years held in January, Kim confessed failures in the country’s past five-year plan for economic growth, explaining in an address that it had”fallen substantially short of its goals in just about all sectors.”
“We should further encourage and expand the victories and successes we’ve gained at the cost of sweat and blood, and prevent the painful lessons from being repeated,” he explained at the time.
North Korea’s economy was further afield by continuing sanctions over its nuclear development plan.
Former President Trump’s continued efforts at direct diplomacy with Kim to build negotiations over the nation’s nuclear weapons largely failed.
