Advanced missiles may not be the most desperately needed commodity the Russians are giving the North Koreans by way of payment for millions of artillery shells. How about goats?

In a country where thousands of children are growing up stunted, the arrival of 447 goats, 432 females and 15 males, is creating as much excitement as boatloads of missiles and the technology to make many more of them.

The port city of Nampo, on the Yellow Sea 36 miles southwest of Pyongyang, “is equipping goat farms with necessary facilities and increasing the number of goats of good breed,” according to reports from Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency. “In this way, the city is working hard to boost the production of dairy goods.” 

KCNA did not say from where the goats were coming, but Washington’s Radio Free Asia reports that a Russian quarantine agency, Roselhoznazor, approved the export of the goats “after reviewing compliance with sanitary conditions for goats.”  They’re on their way to the port of Rason, on the North’s east coast, from near Leningrad, a journey of more than 6,000 miles, followed by a ride of more than 500 miles to Nampo.

The trip could save a lot more North Korean lives than all those missiles that the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, threatens to rain on his enemies, notably South Korea, Japan, and, of course, America. 

“Goat farms of big capacity have been built in districts and counties of the city of Nampo,” KCNA said, “laying a firmer foundation for providing dairy products to the children in the city.” 

Mr. Kim has been urging economic reform, talking about speeding up agricultural production, but he appears far more interested in developing defenses than in feeding his people. Radio Free Asia reported that one of his most trusted aides, the first vice director of the ruling Workers Party, Kim Jong-sik, was attending a military-technical forum at Moscow, presumably checking out the missiles and other weaponry.

South Korea’s Yonhap News cited a report issued by the World Bank, the UN Children’s Fund, and the World Health Organization that said “one in six North Korean children under age five were suffering from stunted growth in 2022 due to malnutrition.” 

A South Korean business newspaper, Maeil Kyungje, quoted a livestock expert, Cho Hyun, as saying some goats imported between 20 and 30 years ago had not been breeding successfully. “As North Korea does not interact with the outside world,” Mr. Cho said, “animals have become inbreeding.” 

An earlier attempt at bringing livestock into North Korea was an even worse failure. After the founder of the Hyundai empire, Chung Ju-yung, brought 1,001 cows into North Korea aboard flatbed trucks in 1998, North Korea turned out to be incapable of taking care of them. “Most of them died because North Korea did not raise cattle well,” a professor at Hiroshima University, Yoshihiro Makino, told RFA.

Mr. Makino was more optimistic, though, about the prospect for goats. They “are relatively easier to raise than cattle, “ he said, but all depends on “whether they can be managed well.”