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Category: Famine & Food Aid

September 29, 2008

Interesting, in the unlikely event it’s authentic …

Just as I question those detailed reports on the progress of Kim Jong Il’s purported illness and recovery, I question the sourcing for this anecdote.  Still, it’s entertaining enough to warrant posting: On September 2nd, Chairman Kim of the National Defense Committee received a recent report on the food crisis. It was reported to him that many regions are suffering from severe food shortages. Apparently, he was even shocked to receive word that emergency measures are especially necessary because the...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il
September 19, 2008

Starving Soldiers Deplete North Korea’s Meager Harvest

I got too busy to keep an eye on Good Friends’ updates for a while,  but on my commute home last night, I managed to eke out the time to read some items that caught my interest.  Overall,  people continue to die by the dozens, though not yet by the hundreds or thousands.  The starvation seems localized, yet those localities are distributed across the country, including the regions surrounding Pyongyang.  But what I’m watching for most keenly is a sign...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Military/Regime Change
August 24, 2008

Let Them Eat Grass: North Korea’s ‘Miracle’ Foods

Displaying its characteristic talent for attracting universal apathy punctuated by brief moments of global  disgust, the  North Korean regime claims to have invented noodles that make you feel full  … even when you aren’t.    North Korean scientists have developed a new kind of noodle that delays feelings of hunger, a Japan-based pro-Pyongyang newspaper has reported.  The noodles were made from corn and soybeans, the Choson Shinbo said.  They left people feeling fuller longer and represented a technological breakthrough, the...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/WTF?
August 20, 2008

U.N. Will Ask 2MB for Food Aid for N. Korea

The World Food Program will ask  South Korea to contribute aid for North Korea within the next 10 days.  Presumably, the aid would go through the WFP, which would represent a significant shift away from the Roh / DJ policy of giving unilateral and effectively  unmonitored aid, will full knowledge that most of it will end up in the wrong stomachs.  Lee  appears to understand  that unmonitored aid only prolongs the hunger and misery.  Left to set its own priorities,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
August 8, 2008

N. Korea Food Crisis Updates

Good Friends was our early warning system.  Now that the famine has begun, the U.N. is sounding an alarm.  North Korea is heading toward its worst food crisis since the 1990s because of flooding, successive crop failures and worldwide inflation for staples such as rice and corn, the United Nations World Food Program said Wednesday. The agency shied away from predicting another famine like the one that killed as many as 2 million people in the 1990s, but said its...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
July 31, 2008

Famine Strikes N. Korean Region that Floods Missed

As busy as I’ve been at work, I’ve been derelict in covering the famine.  But the famine continues to spread and worsen, according to the Word Food Program: North Korea is suffering its worst food crisis since the late 1990s due to rising grain prices and a poor harvest, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday. “We believe that the food security situation right now, in many parts of the country, is the worst that it has been since the late...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Media Criticism
June 27, 2008

The Year of the Boat People?

 With the worst of  this year’s North Korean famine concentrated in southern coastal areas, flight across the Tumen River to China is no longer the easiest way to flee North Korea.  This famine map, courtesy of Good Friends, is instructive (click for full size):   In the past, North Koreans have fled to South Korea by sea in onesies and twosies.  The first attempt at mass defection by sea ended with disastrous results — the South Koreans sent them back...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Refugees
June 20, 2008

Some Food Situation Updates

MARCUS NOLAND FORWARDS  two more updates on  North Korea’s food situation.  The first (“North Korea: The Emergence of Pre-famine Conditions”) is co-authored with Stephan  Haggard; the second (“Korean Institutional Reform in Comparative Perspective”) is co-authored with Erik Weeks.  RICE EATERS, CORN EATERS, GRASS EATERS:  The Daily NK has  more on how the different classes in North Korea are surviving the current food crisis, and a very detailed report on food aid monitoring and manipulation.  Among other things, some members of...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 18, 2008

Good Friends: Suspected Avian Flu Epidemic in North Korea

Here’s Good Friends Newsletter 143:  good-friends-143.pdf A lot of people are getting sick and dying in the northeast due to a mysterious illness. The North Koreans seem to think that they have an outbreak of avian flu on their hands. If that’s true, we can thank His Porcine Majesty for a global health crisis that governments worldwide have dreaded and braced for. Among the places where dead birds were found, and where one child died, is Camp 16.  Bird-flu Virus...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 18, 2008

Some Good Friends Updates

With busy times in recent days, I’ve fallen behind on posting Good Friends updates.  I’ll try to catch these up a few at a time, and I’m just going to post the summaries Good Friends sends as well, without having had time to read the bulletins themselves.  Here’s number 139, dated June 9th:  good-friends-139.pdf * Senior Officials at Gimchaek Steel Mill Meet Over Absentee Workers * Difficulties at Gimchaek Caused by the Bankruptcy of the Jangsaeng Company * Workers and...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
June 9, 2008

Good Friends: NK Soldiers Ordered to Send Wives, Children to Home Provinces

Good Friends Newsletter Number 138 is here: nkt138-eng1.pdf   Highlights: Skyrocketing rice prices top W4,500/kG in South Hwanghae, W4,200 in North Hwanghae.  Corn at approx. W2,000/kG;   Starving North Koreans dying from eating grass, spoiled food; Middle-class North Koreans selling luxury possessions for a fraction of their former value (VCR’s, refrigerators, TV’s); Regime allows some food-seekers into China; This won’t be good for military morale: The 4th corps headquarters of Hwanghae Province fell far short in military food supplies this...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 9, 2008

Good Friends: Mysterious Disease Spreads in N. Korea; More Signs of Discontent

Good Friends Newsletter No. 137 is here:  nkt137-eng1.pdf Highlights: Rising mortality in both South and North Hwanghae provinces from famine and the effects of “alternative” foods made of grass; Mysterious disease spreads, kills kids near Chinese border regions; doctors guess  it could be  avian flu or hand-foot-and mouth disease; Frost kills crop seedlings in North Pyongan; Amid fertilizer shortage, regime set quota for human excrement (seriously) that starving people can’t meet; Hungry North Koreans express resentment at growing class divisions,...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 9, 2008

Good Friends: Famine Worsens Along N. Korea’s East Coast, Regime Tries to Shief Pyongyang from Starvation

Good Friends Dispatch No. 136  is here:  nkt136-eng1.pdf Highlights: Regime promotes “alternative foods,” generally  made of grass; Some local officials turning to traders to feed the starving; central government fires one local official for taking out a “food loan;” Rising death toll among farmers in Kangwon and near Hamheung; Situation in Sinuiju is desperate, but not yet in famine condition; High absenteeism from munitions factory in Eundok County; workers are too weakened by hunger; In Pyongyang, hard times but relatively...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 4, 2008

In Food Aid Talks, North Korea Reverts to Old Ways; Regime Thins Population of P’yang

A reliable source who asks not to be named e-mailed me yesterday to pass along a fly-on-the-wall  description of an “expert’s meeting” in Beijing.  The purpose of the meeting between U.S. and North Korean  officials  had been  to agree on the technical details of the U.S. food aid program — exactly how  the North Korean regime will and will not allow us to feed its population.  The meeting was described as “fairly downbeat” and  “contentious,” with the North Korean negotiators  predictably...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
June 2, 2008

Food Shortages Widen N. Korea’s Class Gap

[Update:    For some reason,  the links to those Good Friends  reports are finicky.  Try this: newsletter-number-133.pdf newsletter-number-134.pdf  ] Two more dispatches from  Good Friends reinforce previous reports that as the food crisis intensifies, it’s kids and for the elderly especially hard.  Things only seem to be  getting worse.  You have to question the precision and timeliness of anecdotes and direct quotations smuggled out of North Korea, but I  quote  them here nonetheless.   Read and decide for yourself. Among 2...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 1, 2008

N. Korean Famine Spurs Broad Discontent But Little Resistance So Far

Several new reports inform us that the famine in North Korea continues to worsen, and to claim ever larger numbers of victims. Reports from Good Friends and the Daily NK suggest that discontent is spreading among all generations and political strata of North Korean society.  Dissent is expressed more openly than in the past, but aside from some isolated protests over market restrictions, it has not yet translated into active resistance. Andrew Natsios suggests that it may: “The North Korean...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Regime Change
May 28, 2008

U.S. Food Aid to North Korea: Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

For those of you who do not know him, Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics is  a leading expert and author  on the North Korean economy and  food crisis.  Noland writes in to  report that he has learned some details of the U.S. government’s negotiations with the North Koreans on food aid.  The  negotiations have resulted in an agreement (for now) on food aid to the North, something I personally support for overriding humanitarian reasons notwithstanding my...
Categories Famine & Food Aid