Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

The irrigated area in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was 1 460 000 ha in 1995 [KP01]. More recent data were not available from national sources but according to statistics provided by FAOSTAT [KP02], area equipped for irrigation has been constant until 2009. Subnational data on the extent of irrigated land were missing as well.

An inventory of land form, land cover and crop-use intensity [KP03] was used to assign area equipped for irrigation to specific pixels. The map is based on remote sensing and distinguishes land forms (alluvial land, upland, hilly or steep land, and wetland), land uses (paddy rice, forest, rangeland or pasture, and urban) as well as five different classes of cultivation intensity. It was assumed that the paddy-fields (about 557 000 ha) were completely equipped for irrigation. It was further assumed that the fields assigned to other crops were also equipped for irrigation where they were located in the plains or river valleys with alluvial land (about 637 000 ha). The difference from the total area equipped for irrigation (about 266 000 ha) was distributed to fields cropped with upland crops.

In 1990 about 200 000 ha were irrigated with groundwater and 1 220 000 ha with surface water. Based on this ratio area equipped for irrigation with groundwater was assumed to be 205 600 ha as visible in the table below and in the downloadable Democratic People’s Republic of Korea irrigation areas in PDF or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea irrigation areas in Excel. Area actually irrigated was 1 341 000 ha in year 2006 [KP01].

References

[KP01]: FAO. 2011. AQUASTAT country profile of Democratic People´s Republic of Korea, version 2010. FAO, Rome, Italy.
[KP02]: FAO. 2012. FAOSTAT. http://faostat.fao.org, 06/09/2012.
[KP03]: United Nations Environment Programme. 2004. Land form, land cover and crop use intensity mapping for agriculture rehabilitation and food security in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Sioux Falls, USA, USGS, http://grid2.cr.usgs.gov, 27/01/2004.