TTTTT
On July 19, 2002, reports from North Korea suggest
the authorities have begun moves to end the rationing of rice and sell it on
the free market. According to BBC, an unidentified North Korean official in
Beijing told Yonhap of South Korea: "The abolition of the rice rationing
system and graded salaries will go into effect this month."
Food supplies have been badly affected in
recent years by a series of natural disasters and the weakness of the North
Korean economy. After severe famine hit the country in the mid-90s in which
several hundred thousand people are said to have died, North Korea has become
heavily reliant on international food aid, BBC and other reports said. The
Stalinist nation has relied on food aid since a massive famine and natural
disasters in 1995 caused the collapse of the state-planned economy.
Rationing
basic foods, rice and its substitutes, has long been established by the
Communists as a fundamental policy, a dual-purpose measure: tightening people's
belt to construct socialist economy, and setting up strict control and law
enforcement on every citizen. Many people in non-communist countries saw only
the former but were unaware of the latter. The food rationing system in North
Vietnam during the 1960-75 War is the best example of how efficient the system
could be in contributing to the war efforts.
The
first step of North Vietnam food control was to monopolize all basic foods
supply since the late 1950s. Under the Agricultural Co-operative system, nearly
hundred percent productions of rice and its substitutes (corn, potato, manioc)
had to be sold only to the General Department of Food Management.
The
second step was to establish a food distribution channel and rationing
standards shortly later. People could buy food only at stores of the Food
Management branch at limited quantities specified on food stamps. There were
various classes of stamps. Following are a few examples.
-
Principal worker in farm work or light industry or administrative branches: two
225-gram stamps/day or 13.5 kilograms/30-day month. (19.5 oz/day and 30
lbs/month).
-
Secondary worker (light work): 400 grams/day or 12 kgs/month.
-
The elderly, non-working, disabled and children under 15 years old: 300
grams/day or 9 kgs/month; children under 10 years old: 230 grams/day or
7kgs/month.
-
Worker in state-owned plantations, worker in heavy industry: 15 kgs/month.
-
Hard laborer in mines, salt fields, state-run silvicultural farms, fishing
co-operatives: 18 kgs/month.
-
Soldier: 21 kgs/month.
- Party
and state high ranking official were exempted from the rationing system (food
and all other consumer goods).
Food price was
fixed at 0.40 NVN-dong/kilogram, all around North Vietnam. The lowest wages at
the time was 18 dong/month, equal to the price of 45 kgs of rice. Rations
consisted of 70 percent rice and 30 percent rice substitutes in the 1960s; rice
percentage was dropping as the war went on, down to 10 percent rice in 1974.
The
rations made farmers and workers live in endless hunger. A farmer in South
Vietnam, even under French colonialist regime before 1945, consumed about 20 kg
of rice a month along with some meat and fish. Meat and fish rations in North
Vietnam (1960s and 1970s) were limited to an average of 200 grams/month (or 7
oz).
The
Communist political lessons claimed that the scanty food rations were providing
man enough calories to work in normal conditions. Mao Tse-tung himself advocated the theory.
According
to Prof. Mieczyslaw Maneli in The War of the Vanquished (Harper&Row, N.Y.
1971, p. 81), Mao said in the meeting with a visiting delegation from Poland
that 1,500 calories was sufficient for a man to work. He also said "if the
people feel that there are too few consumer goods available, the party and the
government should increase their propaganda efforts."
As
he had always imitated almost everything Mao was doing in China, Ho Chi Minh
copied the whole food rationing system and standards from Mao's. The top
Vietnam Communist party (VCP) leaders were greatly successful in both
objectives: controlling and mobilizing North Vietnamese mass to sustain the
long war against South Vietnam and its allied forces, and at last they won the
war.
When
a person had to leave the household for a new position elsewhere such as to
report to military training as draftee or to serve people's laborer (war labor)
groups, the village (or city ward) Public Security would cross out his or her
name from the household register book and take back remaining food stamps of
the month. As everyone had only similar starving ration, members of a family
could not share their food with a dodger.
Similarly,
prisoners wouldn't run away because they didn't know where to go beside their
home villages. They could not acquire household registration anywhere and so no
food stamps to survive.
Transients
had to produce identity cards along with traveling permits issued by village
Public Security in order to rent a room or staying overnight at a hotel or a
boarding house. As to buy a meal or a bowl of "pho" (noodle soup),
one must present a food stamp for the meal in proper quantity specified on the
stamp. It was not easy to be granted such permit. And it was hundred times more
difficult to obtain approval to moving to another household (or the whole
household to another location) beyond the village boundary.
Besides,
as a soldier or a war laborer, even on the Ho Chi Minh trails with so many
dangers and hardships, he or she would not feel more miserable than life in the
co-operatives. At least they were fed 21 kg a month with all-rice ration that
had only been in a dream while living in their home villages. People must have
been living in very poor areas to feel the full difference between 12-kg and
13.5-kg rations.
Therefore,
it was the food control and distribution combined with household registration
that contributed a powerful support to Hanoi's war efforts. That is the most
accurate answer to the so common question as "During the Vietnam War, what
helped Hanoi draw so much support from North Vietnamese people, and why."
Since
1968, the total control of food production and distribution over North Vietnam
has been losing its power because roads, bridges and means of transportation
were destroyed. The situation was even worse after the great floods all around
Vietnam in 1978, when most farmers quit co-operatives to make their living
elsewhere possible, leaving the collective rice fields unattended. Vietnam
rural economy was moving towards tragic collapse.
To
save the party from losing its ruling power, a new policy, the "production
piece work contractual system" was introduced in which each farmer family
was allowed to farm a plot of land on a contractual basis. The family had to
pay the government a certain quantity of rice as rent (about 50 percent of the
crop or higher).
The
policy unintentionally restored free food markets which were taking over a
larger part of the food production and distribution. Consequently, the food
stamps slowly faded away.
Ending
the rice rationing system is North Korean Communist leaders' unavoidable
decision. Just like the Vietnam Communist leaders, they don't want to take the
decision but they have to. In fact, North Korea Communist Party has built a
strong military power and a powerful dictatorship as its comrades in Vietnam
gained a big war victory. Both were relying on controlling their people's small
bowls of rice. Without a strict rice rationing system as a key policy, Hanoi is
increasingly losing its controls over social activities and evils, and a little
part of political stability.
However,
there are differences between the two economies. Land for food plant growing in Vietnam is much larger than in
North Korea, but current income per capita in North Korea is three times higher
than in Vietnam: approximately 1,000/300 U.S. dollars a year.