Moreover, the conditions of canals and pumping stations have been deteriorating because of natural calamities, while the pumping stations and the feeding steel pipes have suffered from a lack of spare parts and poor maintenance. The Mission found that water pumping hours, and hence, the supply of irrigation water to crop fields have seriously declined. The highly mechanised DPR Korea agriculture faces a serious constraint as about four-fifths of the motorised farm machinery and equipment is out of use due to obsolescence and lack of spare parts and fuel. During field visits, the Mission saw a large proportion of tractors, transplanters, trucks and other farm machinery lying unused and unusable. The breakdown of machinery has meant that work animals, which are also in short supply, and human labour are being used as substitutes.
Artificial pesticides are also scarce.
The worsening economic disaster in North Korea has been deliberately exacerbated by the US administration as a means of undermining the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. In ruling circles in Washington, a debate has been developing over the last decade as to the best means for exploiting the unfolding human disaster in North Korea to further US interests in what is a key strategic region, adjacent to Russia, China and Japan. A report by former Assistant Secretary of Defence Richard Armitage tabled in the US Congress last month provides a flavour of the debate taking place. At the centre of the criticisms by Armitage and Congressional Republicans is the deal struck in 1994 between the US and North Korea, after a series of highly provocative US demands for the opening up the North Korea's nuclear reactors to inspections. Under the agreement, Pyongyang shut down its existing nuclear program in return for limited aid and assistance in building new replacement light water reactors, which have little potential for producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel.