Andrew Natsios Talks About Witnessing Mass Burials in NK

This isn’t exactly news, but it’s newsworthy. Natsios, a courageous and forthright man who recently announced his resignation as head of USAID, discussed this in his book, The Great North Korean Famine. He also suggested that he had videotape. After I read the passage, I made inquiries with some of Natsios’s aides to try to get and publish a copy, but to no avail. Well, Natsios is now talking about it to the Korea Times:

“Famine relief means, if you succeed, you save people’s lives. If you fail, lots of people die.”

He recounted how in 1998 he saw from the Chinese side of the border between North Korea and China the mass burial of North Koreans who died of hunger.

“I’ve been to famines before. I’ve watched mass burial in North Korea on Tumen River… went up undercover in October, November of 1998” when he was across the river with his South Korean friend, Ven. Beopryun, he said.

“We were in China, and we had telescopes, and they dumped 29 bodies in a big pit, and they covered over the bodies. It was a famine, and a lot of people refused to recognize it at the time,” said Natsios.

“They are terrible events, only comparable in my view to genocide.”

However that gets out, I just hope it gets seen by someone while there’s still time to keep the next mass grave from being filled. Natsios continues to insist that the U.S. won’t give North Korea aid unless WFP monitors make sure it’s distributed to those who need it. You can read more about Andrew Natsios here and here.

In the meantime, the WFP continues its negotiations with Pyongyang to get those monitors back into North Korea. This time, Executive Director James Morse is in Pyongyang. But with every day that passes, more lives are apt to be lost.