Stolen from the Bellies of the Starving
“At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death.
News that North Koreans are again starving to death may cause you to wonder where all the money is going.
The report said North Korea increased its submarine fleet from 70 in 2004 to 88 today. Those submarines have the capability to mine Korea’s major harbors, such as Busan or Pohang, in order to block the import of fuel, other natural resources and U.S. military reinforcements.
That’s 18 submarines in 2 years. During those same years, the world was called on to feed North Korea’s people, one third of whom may have been dependent on international aid. Little of that aid was effectively monitored, and as much as 30% of it was diverted before it got to those who needed it.
The full report fromt the International Institute for Strategic Studies is here, but it’s not free, so I wasn’t able to figure out which of the various types of submarines the North’s new acquistions were. On the other hand, the North Korean Army is getting smaller. Some very modest manpower reductions are the very least of it:
The service, in a report prepared for Representative Song Young-sun of the Grand National Party, said that Pyongyang changed its draft exemption standards in the mid-1990s, lowering the minimum height to be drafted from 150 centimeters (4 feet, 11 inches) to 148 centimeters and the minimum weight from 48 kilograms (106 pounds) to 43 kilograms. Vision standards for soldiers were also relaxed.
Kim Tae-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, said the change could have been made because of a sense of crisis at the time. Russia and China were improving their ties with South Korea, the birth rate in the North was dropping and weather and agricultural mismanagement had triggered the beginnings of a famine that cut into the already scanty food supplies for the average North Korean.
All strictly defensive, of course. I suppose it all comes down to cold economics: submarines are just easier to feed than human beings.