Food supply proxy indicator up just 0.1% in 2024–2025 crop year

Rice prices jump 73.6% as market exchange rate surges 74.4%, moving in lockstep

Price shock spreads to substitute and processed foods this year, raising 'access' alarm

Photo not related to article [Getty Images Bank]
Photo not related to article [Getty Images Bank]

North Korea's market rice prices have surged more than 70 percent even though the country's food supply conditions have not deteriorated significantly, a new analysis shows. Researchers say the spike was driven not by a shortage of food itself but by a weakening North Korean won and a sharp rise in the market exchange rate. With the price shock now spreading beyond rice to substitute and processed foods this year, analysts are calling for North Korea's food security to be assessed not only by output but also by whether ordinary residents can actually afford to buy food — what researchers call "economic access."

The Korea Rural Economic Institute held a roundtable on inter-Korean agricultural cooperation Wednesday at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, reviewing recent trends in North Korean agriculture, food security, economic conditions and external economic relations.

According to a presentation by Jung Dae-hee, an associate research fellow at the institute, the proxy indicator for North Korea's food supply in the 2024–2025 crop year rose just 0.1 percent from the previous year — meaning supply was in effect unchanged.

Yet over the same period, the nominal market price of rice jumped 73.6 percent. The market exchange rate surged 74.4 percent. Physical food supply and market prices moved in entirely different directions.

The relative price of rice compared with non-staple foods rose sharply, from 0.9 in the first quarter of 2024 to 3.2 in the first quarter of 2026. Researchers found that much of the rise in rice prices during 2024–2025 tracked movements in the exchange rate.

Key North Korean food security indicators (Korea Rural Economic Institute)

| Category | Key change | |---|---| | Food supply proxy indicator, 2024–2025 crop year | +0.1% year on year | | Nominal rice price | +73.6% year on year | | Market exchange rate | +74.4% year on year | | Relative price of rice vs. non-staple foods | 0.9 (Q1 2024) → 3.2 (Q1 2026) | | Rice output | +10.3% (2012–2025) | | Corn output | -12.5% (2012–2025) | | Wheat and barley output | +94.7% (2012–2025) | | Soybean output | +39.4% (2012–2025) | | Wheat and barley output (volume) | 180,000 tons (2022) → 364,000 tons (2025) |

In the past, declines in food supply and rising prices did not always move together. In the 2015–2016 crop year, the supply proxy indicator fell 5.7 percent from the previous year, yet the nominal rice price actually fell 2.6 percent. The recent pattern is the reverse: supply has barely changed while prices have surged.

This year, price instability has spread to other foods. Between the first and second quarters of 2026, the market exchange rate fell 2.0 percent, yet rice prices rose 13.9 percent. A composite index for major food items jumped 60.0 percent, diet-diversification foods rose 66.0 percent, basic processed and seasoning foods climbed 34.0 percent, and staple food substitutes surged 91.0 percent.

North Korea's food production itself appears to have stabilized over the long term, breaking out of the sharp decline seen in earlier decades. Most of the production drop in the 1990s stemmed from falling yields per unit of land rather than a reduction in cultivated area, but output has since recovered and stabilized to levels comparable with the past.

The composition of what is grown, however, has shifted. Between 2012 and 2025, rice output rose 10.3 percent while corn output fell 12.5 percent. Wheat and barley production grew 94.7 percent and soybean output rose 39.4 percent. Wheat and barley output in particular more than doubled in three years, climbing from 180,000 tons in 2022 to 217,000 tons in 2023, 280,000 tons in 2024 and 364,000 tons in 2025.

External food procurement channels have narrowed. North Korea's direct food imports fell sharply from $553 million in 2019 — before border closures — to $205 million in 2020, recovered to $441 million in 2023, then dropped again to $268 million in 2024. The number of observable supplier countries has declined over the long term, and dependence on China has grown.

Researchers argued that assessing North Korea's food security by production figures alone has its limits. They said analysis should proceed in stages: "availability," which measures whether food exists; "economic access," which measures whether residents can actually buy food in the market; and "utilization," which measures whether food consumption translates into adequate nutrition.

North Korea's nutrition indicators have not always moved in the same direction as food supply. Between 2010 and 2018, per capita daily food energy supply fell 3.5 percent, from 2,054 kilocalories to 1,981 kilocalories, while animal protein supply rose 8.4 percent, from 10.8 grams to 11.7 grams per day.

Jung concluded that North Korea's food security is no longer simply a matter of production levels, but has shifted to a structure in which supply, prices, the exchange rate, household purchasing power and nutritional status all move in different directions. He recommended that monitoring of North Korea's food security be expanded beyond production to cover external procurement, market access, household access and nutritional outcomes, assessed at each stage.


adastra@heraldcorp.com