A/HRC/25/CRP.1 unable to pay. By the mid-1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with the end of Chinese patience with its neighbour. 140. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping instigated unprecedented reform in China, bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty. China also built ties with Japan as part of this process. In 1989, the Sino-Soviet split came to an end. China normalized relations with the ROK in 1992, which unsettled the DPRK. The death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 contributed to strains in the relations between the DPRK and China. In fact, one of the proximate causes of the 1990s famine was the change in trade levels with China. After the DPRK’s bilateral trade with the Soviet Union dropped more than ten-fold from $2.56 billion 1990 to $1.4 million in 1994, the DPRK became dependent on China for assistance.91 However, the DPRK’s bilateral trade with China fell from US$900 million in 1993 to $550 million in 1995, while food exports fell by half between 1993 and 1994.92 The seasonal arrival of extreme rains in July and August 1995 compounded by soil erosion and river silting led to flooding that destroyed the harvest and contributed to the period of starvation that has been deemed the great famine and referred to as the “Arduous March” by the DPRK. Between 1996 and 1999, it is estimated that between 450,000 and 2 million people starved to death.93 141. One of the unintended consequences of the human-made famine was the widespread emergence of informal markets. It is estimated that informal economic activities reached 78 per cent of total income for North Korean households a decade after the famine.94 As the Public Distribution System was no longer able to provide even minimal amounts of food, the authorities were unable to exercise the level of control they had once been able to. The breakdown of social control led to fissures in the blockade on information from outside the country. At the same time, control on the freedom of movement was loosened as large numbers of people attempted to escape from the DPRK and others sought to obtain supplies from China to trade. As many more North Koreans travelled back and forth to China, they were seeing for themselves the relative prosperity of China and received information about the ROK which was vastly different from the official propaganda of the government. The leadership made numerous efforts to rein in the markets and constrain the freedom of movement. These measures met with various levels of resistance.95 142. In the ROK, two politically liberal presidents—Kim Dae-jung elected in 1997 and Roh Moo-hyun elected in 2002—who had strong human rights credentials, pursued policies of engagement without conditions in a bid to improve relations. Their goal was to gradually move towards reunification rather than to engender sudden regime collapse in the DPRK or violent confrontation. President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” culminated in a historic summit with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in 2000. President Roh Moo-hyun essentially continued the Sunshine Policy under the “Peace and Prosperity Policy”. The Sunshine Policy is estimated to have provided USD 3 billion in aid from the ROK to the DPRK. The ROK also engaged in joint projects to provide opportunities to the DPRK to earn foreign 91 92 93 94 95 Andrei Lankov notes the difficulty in realizing the actual level of support from the Soviet Union and China as much of their aid was provided indirectly through subsidized trade: Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Utopian State (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 73-76. Victor Cha, The Impossible State, p. 327. See section IV.D. Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea, pp. 82-90. See section IV.D. 39