SEOUL—North Korea is placing as much emphasis on producing manure as it is on firing missiles, and it doesn’t matter whether it comes from people or animals.

While test-firing two missiles in less than a week, North Korea has been waging “the battle for manure,” which is far more vital for average North Koreans than the splash of another test-shot into the sea off the east coast.

The quest has reached crisis level over the past two years as fertilizer almost stopped coming in from China after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un closed borders at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. And then, last March, the North refused donations from South Korea while demanding an end to U.S. and UN sanctions.

How Kim Jong Un Became the World’s Most Bloodthirsty Dictator

The urgency of the quest “doesn’t sound like ‘BS’ to me,” Victor Cha, who is in charge of North Korea issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “It’s an interesting commentary that ‘smells’ of how serious the crop situation is without the annual fertilizer shoveled out by South Korea.”

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/desperate-kim-jong-un-pleads-020011507.html