Hunger Still Haunts North Korea, Citizens Say

Some more useful insights into north Korea.  The UN says the best food situation in years yet the suffering continues.  The regime cannot manage an economy, either one that is based on central control or one with at least some slight openness.  

The closed nature of North Korea means that interpreting what's happening there is tricky. Some observers argue that inflation could be progress, a sign of economic liberalization, with prices dictated by the market rather than the state. And the very fact that North Koreans are going abroad legally shows the iron grip of the state is loosening slightly. 

But the bad news is that life is actually harder for most ordinary folks — so hard that, for one entire family, death seemed an easier option.

V/R

Dave

Hunger Still Haunts North Korea, Citizens Say

by LOUISA LIM

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/10/166760055/hunger-still-haunts-north-korea-citizens-say

December 10, 2012

While North Korea has long struggled with dire food shortages, the United Nations now assesses its food situation as being the best in many years. But NPR has had unusual access to five North Koreans in China, who paint a dramatically different, and alarming, picture.

Even as North Korea mourned its leader Kim Jong Il last December, one surprising thing was on people's minds: fish. State-run television showed people lining up in shops; the dear leader's last wish, apparently, was to provide fish to his people.

"This fish makes me sorely miss him," 62-year-old Ku Ok Son tearfully told the state-run news agency, KCNA, in a report shortly after Kim's death.

Every day you wake up in the morning and you wonder what you are going to eat, and you worry all the time.

- Mrs. Ju

The news agency equated the supplies of fresh fish with Kim Jong Il's "deep concern" for the people. This might explain recent features on gleaming new supermarkets stocked with the latest goods, and an inspection trip by the new leader, Kim's 20-something son, Kim Jong Un, to a fancy new meat shop, accompanied by top army commanders.

"Kim Jong Un said the intention of the party is to provide a happier life to our people — best in the world," state-run television reported, showing the younger Kim giving solemn instructions on the management of meat shops.

Indeed, an annual report by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program issued last month found the food situation to be better than in previous years. An improved harvest means North Korea's food gap stands at 207,000 tons, the lowest figure "in many years."

But all five North Koreans I met in China say that's not the whole story. The markets are full of food, they agree, but most ordinary people can't afford to buy it. State rations aren't being distributed, and even some soldiers are going hungry. One man who gave his name as Mr. Kim described the drastic action one family he knew took.

North Korean women work on a roadside in North Pyongan province, North Korea, in June. North Korea increased its staple foods production for the second year in a row, but its citizens are still suffering from a serious lack of key proteins and fats in their diets, a U.N. report says.

"I saw one family, a couple with two kids, who committed suicide. Life was too hard, and they had nothing to sell in their house. They made rice porridge, and added rat poison," he recalls. "White rice is very precious, so the kids ate a lot. They died after 30 minutes. Then the parents ate. The whole family died."
(Continued at the link below)
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/10/166760055/hunger-still-haunts-north-korea-citizens-say