The EconomistAugust 29th 2020 Asia 271M
ost travellerssee the food as one of
the least palatable aspects of air tra-
vel. Rubiyanto Haliman is not most travel-
lers. A worker at an Indonesian shrimp
hatchery who flew four to six times a
month before the pandemic, he collects in-
flight menus, magazines and tumblers,
and likes to post pictures of aeroplane food
to his Instagram feed—not in an ironic way.
The past few months, with airlines largely
grounded, have been difficult for him. He
so misses the experience of flying that a
couple of weeks ago he bought a few in-
flight meals from Garuda, the national car-
rier. The food, which was delivered to his
home, was packaged in white plastic con-
tainers and served with plastic cutlery, on a
tray, just as it would be on a plane. The
dishes—spinach and pastrami quiche and
nasi daun jeruk(rice infused with coconut
milk and lime leaf ), each costing 30,000
rupiah ($2)—actually “taste better than
normal in-flight meals,” he says.
Garuda is not the only Asian airline to
flog its food to the land-lubbing public.
Santan, owned by AirAsia, a big low-cost
carrier, sells two Malay staples, nasi lemak
and beef rendang (each $4) at its main hub
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thai Airways
offers stir-fried tiger prawns ($8) and tan-
doori lamb chops ($9.25) in Bangkok. Hong
Kongers can pick up $5 “stir-fried beef
strip” and “Indian curry fish” from Cathay
Pacific’s catering arm. Australians canSINGAPORE
Asian airlines are selling in-flight
meals directly to the publicCatering in the time of covid-19Grounded beef
It fell off the back of an aeroplaneN
orth koreandictators are not given
to self-deprecation. Indeed, they sel-
dom admit to being anything less than god-
like, and lock up those who suggest other-
wise. Yet in mid-August Kim Jong Un told a
meeting of the Workers’ Party that, owing
to multiple “unexpected difficulties”, his
government had recently failed to improve
the lives of the people and meet its eco-
nomic goals. To remedy the situation, the
report in the party newspaper went on, a
party congress would be convened in Janu-
ary to adopt a new five-year plan.
Most economies have been hobbled by
covid-19, but few are doing as badly as
North Korea’s. Never healthy, it was made
less so by international sanctions intended
to stop Mr Kim’s nuclear-weapons pro-
gramme. Floods, brought on by the wettest
rainy season in years, have devastated
crops. And to ward off the pandemic, the
regime has imposed one of the world’s
strictest quarantines.
North Korea shut its borders soon after
the initial outbreak in the Chinese city of
Wuhan in January. For months the authori-
ties insisted that North Korea was covid-
free, to widespread scepticism. In recent
weeks they have quietly dropped that
claim, asserting instead that a repentant
defector who returned from South Korea
was “suspected” of having brought the dis-
ease with him. Nonetheless, the border re-
mains largely closed. Trade has all but
ceased. The value of goods exchanged withChina, North Korea’s main trading partner,
amounted to just over $400m during the
first half of the year, a reduction of two-
thirds compared with the same period last
year, according to a report released by
South Korea’s unification ministry on Au-
gust 25th. And the North is reportedly plan-
ning to tighten the quarantine ahead of cel-
ebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of
the Workers’ Party in October.
The consequences were already visible
in the spring, when even usually well-
stocked shops in the capital ran short of
many consumer goods. Staples such as
cooking oil were rationed. There were
bouts of panic-buying; some North Kore-
ans asked foreign colleagues to purchase
scarce items on their behalf in shops re-
served for foreigners. Such shortages in
Pyongyang suggest much worse condi-
tions in the provinces, which are often de-
prived to ensure that the capital remains
well-fed. Sporadic reports suggest that pro-
vincial street vendors, wary of raising
prices in a crisis, have instead taken to cut-
ting portion sizes.
Since then, things have got worse. Over
the past two months the Korean peninsula
has suffered one of the longest and wettest
rainy seasons for many years. North
Hwanghae province, where much of North
Korea’s rice is grown, was particularly bad-
ly hit. In early August state media reported
that the flooding in the province was likely
to affect the harvest, raising concerns
about food security later in the year (even
in better times, the United Nations esti-
mates that two-fifths of North Koreans suf-
fer from malnutrition). As The Economist
went to press the first typhoon of the sea-
son, which had already ravaged South Ko-
rea’s southern islands, had just made land-
fall in North Hwanghae, adding to the
region’s woes.
In less unusual times humanitarian or-
ganisations would be gearing up to send
water pumps and food aid to the affected
areas to cushion the impact on ordinary
people. Such efforts have never been
straightforward given the regime’s obses-
sion with “self-reliance”. But the North’s
current determination to isolate itself even
more than usual makes relief work almost
impossible. Mr Kim, although keen to
showcase his concern for “the people’s
well-being” during a visit to flood-hit ar-
eas, has rejected offers of foreign help, os-
tensibly for fear that it might bring the vi-
rus into the country. Shipments of
humanitarian goods have slowed to a trick-
le, owing both to sanctions and to the quar-
antine. The vast majority of foreign aid
workers have been forced to leave in recent
months, along with most diplomats. The
few who remain are barred from leaving
Pyongyang. As life in North Korea grows
ever more miserable, the rest of the world is
ever less likely to hear about it. 7SEOUL
As natural disasters strike, Kim Jong
Un cuts off his country from the worldNorth Korea’s economySelf-strangulation