Hundreds of North Koreans Freeze to Death

In addition to the reports of a pandemic that’s now  afflicted thousands in  Chongjin, North Korea’s fourth-largest city, there is now word via the London Daily Telegraph that cold weather has  stranded and killed hundreds in the northeastern mountains:

The men who finally made it into the remote highland village of Koogang were greeted by an eerie silence and a gruesome sight.

Lying among the simple wooden huts and burnt remnants of wooden furniture, they found the bodies of 46 North Korean villagers, including women and children, all of whom had frozen to death. Cut off from the outside world by one of the harshest winters in many years, the villagers had suffered a macabre fate that has exposed both the desperate poverty and callous misrule blighting the Stalinist state.

More than 300 people are thought to have perished from cold so far this winter in North Korea’s mountainous north, victims of temperatures as low as -30C and of an arrogant ruling clique.

“Nobody got out of the trap alive,” said an official at the Chinese embassy in the capital, Pyongyang, who confirmed the events of Koogang. “After heavy snowfalls, there was a severe frost. The inhabitants were doomed.”

Cold weather is not the only factor disrupting transportation in that area.  Some of the  trains have stopped  because of a quarantine intended to contain the pandemic,  power shortages, and subsquent mechanical failures in locomotives run on too little voltage.  The breakdown of the transportation system, deaths from cold, and deaths from disease all suggest that famine, which often kills by depriving the body of the ability to resist cold and disease, is beginning again. 

For years, billions in international aid had staved off mass death caused by hunger, although a large percentage of the North Korean population continues to be stunted and malnourished, and much of the aid is believed to have been diverted for the military and party members.  The worsening situation follows North Korea’s eviction of most international food aid workers last year, flooding of crops, a crackdown on food markets in an effort to regain the state’s control over the food supply,  and the continued squandering of North Korea’s national resources on missiles, nuclear reactors, and one of the world’s largest standing armies.

Some have suggested that this famine will be less severe because only the most  hardened  “survivors” still remain alive, but a severe humanitarian tragedy seems to be unfolding.  As with the Great Famine of the 1990’s, scholars may debate whether to  attribute deaths from cold and disease to famine, but what is clear is that all of them are preventable, and that the failure to prevent them is a crime against humanity.

All I can say is, thank goodness the U.N. is there so that the rest of us don’t have to worry about this.