Kim Jong Un visits chicken farm, calls for improvements amid food crisis in North Korea

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New Delhi: Even as millions of people face hunger crisis in North Korean, its leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a new chicken farm in Hwangju and called for improvements of the same.

The Chicken farm, being built in a county south of capital Pyongyang, has been described as an outdated poultry industry, Kim was quoted saying by the state media said on Thursday. The state media has however not specified exactly when Kim made the trip to the construction site.

North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that Kim appeared to be in a better mood at the chicken farm. He described the facility as a model for modernising chicken farms in the rest of the country, which he described as backward and mostly more than two decades old.

The KCNA, quoting Kim, said farm will be producing thousands of tons of delicious and quality meat and tens of millions of tasty and quality eggs every year, apparently hinting that this will make significant contributions to the dietary life of his people.

North Korea has been reeling under extreme food shortage for decades. The country has for years relied on regular supplies of UN food aid.

A United Nations human rights expert voiced alarm in June 2020, over widespread food shortages and malnutrition in North Korea, which have been exacerbated by a nearly five-month border closure with China and measures against COVID-19, a Reuters report said.

Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told a Geneva news briefing that the humanitarian situation in North Korea “remains bleak”, with some 10 million, or 40% of the population, needing humanitarian aid, Reuters added.