The North Korean People Are Dying

Good Friends and the Daily NK continue to be our only sources of information about what is happening to the North Korean people as famine stalks some areas of the country. This isn’t going to be pleasant reading, and if you’re not well-braced to confront the hard realities of a collectivist utopia in which some animals are more equal than others, read no further.

With the food crisis worsening on farms in Gumchun County in North Hwanghae Province, the number of people who are dying of starvation is increasing. According to one official, “People are not dying everywhere, but there are one or two deaths arising on farms everyday.” Shin Hyung-jong (38) of Namjung-ri (village) said that he traveled to his parent’s home to find some food to eat, but he returned to find his wife on the floor unconscious and his child dead of starvation. In the three of four days that he was gone, his wife and young child, who had until then tried to sustain themselves with watery porridge, had given in to their hunger and died. Despite the death of his child, Shin Hyun-jong made a thin gruel of the few bits of maize rice he received and fed his wife in an attempt to revive her. His wife cried endlessly for a few days because of the guilt and sadness she felt at the loss of her child.

At the Chejong Farm, young children are also dying of starvation. Park Jung-ok (34) used to make gruel out of rice plant roots, but after running out of food, she went in search of something to eat and went to her relatives’ homes with her four year old child. In her weakened state and with her young child who could not even walk well, Park Jung Ok fainted. After a long time, she was discovered by people who were passing by on the road, but by then, her child had already stopped breathing. [Good Friends, North Korea Today No. 125]

There’s no link; I’m now subscribed to Good Friends’ e-mail newsletter, which means that I’m getting these reports when journalists get them. The same report will probably show up on Relief Web in a few days.

The Daily NK also reports that even in the North’s munitions industry, workers are starving to death:

A source from North Korea noted on the 11th, “Since April, on average two or three munitions factory workers have been dying daily, and people also say everyday, “˜Someone living somewhere has died.'” The source said that “In a munitions factory in Kandong-gun, Pyongyang, there are those who have starved. The number of those who are going without food for a week to 10 days is increasing and the number of those who are starving to death is increasing too. The victims are all more than 55-years old.

In the case of munitions factories’, the food distribution situation was comparatively better in previous years than in other kinds of factories thanks to the North Korean “Military-first” policy. However, the food situation has now deteriorated and the situation in the munitions factories has worsened, according to the source.

The source explained that “Ordinary workers in local cities can get by through trades in the jangmadang (markets), but the situation for the munitions factories’ workers is different. They have to go to work due to strong governmental regulation of the munitions factories. Therefore, they cannot help but rely on the food distribution system, and they don’t have any other way to survive without it. [Daily NK]

It’s essential to grasp the significance of starvation in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea and the apex of its hierarchy of privilege. It’s also important that we not overstate the political significance of workers dying, notwithstanding the regime’s rhetoric about their importance. The information I’m seeing at this point suggests that although the regime has been forced to tighten the circle of privilege and throw some “marginal” members of the elite out of the life boat, most of the “core” members of the elite aren’t going hungry because they have money, and because North Korea’s limited supplies of food chase that money.

That means that for now, the elites are winning the bidding war for what food there is in North Korea. While markets have created a modicum of social mobility and economic redistribution that the regime does not control, the general rule this time appears to be the same as last time: the elites live and the expendables starve. As long as that trend continues, the chances of a loss of regime control are greatly reduced, which means that the loss of life in this famine may be far greater.