North Korean households in rural areas of North Hamgyong province have lost access to grain entirely, forcing people to survive on biji (tofu dregs) porridge and kkojang-tteok, a coarse cake made by mixing tofu waste with corn flour.
“There are many people suffering from food shortages in Kilju county and surrounding rural areas,” a North Hamgyong province source told Daily NK on Wednesday. “These people are barely keeping themselves alive by cooking with materials like tofu dregs that used to be fed to livestock.”
Food insecurity reaches crisis levels in rural North Hamgyong
Households that have run out of grain are preparing biji porridge or kkojang-tteok, a dense cake associated with the famine of the 1990s. Kkojang-tteok was a survival food during the March of Tribulation, the period of mass starvation that killed an estimated hundreds of thousands of North Koreans. Today, with corn flour prices rising, people are preparing the cake with a higher proportion of tofu dregs than before.
“People in food-depleted rural areas are making kkojang-tteok with roughly 80% tofu dregs and 20% corn flour, and when even that’s too difficult, they boil the dregs alone into porridge,” the source said. “Tofu sellers in Kilju county are now running out of dregs because there’s nothing left to sell.”
Biji is priced at around 2,000 North Korean won (approximately $0.15) per kilogram, far cheaper than grain, which has driven a surge in demand. Despite the low price, many rural households cannot afford even this and are taking out high-interest loans to buy it, promising to repay more than double the amount borrowed once the autumn harvest comes in.
The source said the annual lean season, known as the boritgoge or “barley hump,” typically arrives in April and at the latest in May, but has been shifting earlier in recent years. “This year, many households had already run out of grain by February, and the situation has gotten worse since then,” the source said.
Purchasing power has collapsed alongside food access. The source noted that 50,000 North Korean won (approximately $3.75) once bought around eight kilograms of rice, but now buys only around two kilograms. “The price of rice back then is now the price of corn today, and even corn is out of reach for many people,” the source said.
Conditions vary within rural communities. Some households eat rice daily and have meat or fish on the table once or twice a week. But the widening gap between those households and the food-insecure majority is generating social tension.
Hunger widening social divide among rural children
On March 12, a fight broke out among children in Kilju county after a child from a better-off household boasted about eating meat. A child from a poorer household claimed to have eaten meat as well, was called out as a liar, and a dispute followed. The source described similar incidents as increasingly common.
“Even at a young age, children feel ashamed, so they try not to show that they’re going hungry,” the source said. “But in the end, everyone knows each other’s circumstances, so resentment over the wealth gap never goes away, even among young children.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
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