North Korea’s Kim Warns of ‘Arduous March’ as Economic Problems Bite

SEOUL—North Korean chief Kim Jong Un known as on officers to brace for a prolonged marketing campaign to deal with the country’s worsening financial challenges, comparing the disaster to the nineties famine that claimed the life of hundreds of thousands of people.

Mr. Kim had earlier warned of North Korea’s mounting challenges, which assortment from the affect of U.S. financial sanctions to summertime floods. In excess of the class of the coronavirus pandemic, Pyongyang also shut down international tourism in a bid to end the spread of Covid-19, and trade with China—which accounts for about 9-tenths of North Korea’s overall once-a-year trade—plunged 75% past 12 months, according to Chinese trade details.

Concluding a meeting of minimal-degree users of the ruling Workers’ Celebration on Thursday, Mr. Kim instructed delegates to embark on what he known as an “Arduous March” to minimize the expanding financial challenges, according to condition media. For North Koreans, the time period evokes the prolonged time period of hunger in the nineties when the country’s highly-centralized economy struggled to cope with a collection of natural disasters and the end of help from the former Soviet Union.

The upheaval led to the emergence of underground markets and unofficial cross-border trade with China as millions of common North Koreans struggled to survive just after frequent flooding devastated farmlands, prompting the U.S. and United Nations to provide meals aid.

Mr. Kim’s remarks occur as Washington is conducting a evaluation of its North Korea policy following discussions with officers in Seoul and Tokyo.