Noland and Haggard on North Korea’s New Famine

Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard have just published three new op-eds in an attempt to sound the alarm about North Korea’s growing new famine. The first of these you should read is an extensive discussion of the evidence supporting their dire predictions in the Korea Herald (normally unlinkable, but uploaded in pdf here).

The second is this op-ed at Newsweek, which draws an apt comparison to the situation in Burma. Although Noland and Haggard place most of the blame for this situation on wreckless and ruthless decisions by the regime, they also cast blame at the U.N. World Food Program for “unwittingly” exacerbating the situation by crying wolf — to which I would add the greater sin of being so compliant with North Korean restrictions on the delivery of that aid that the people who needed it probably saw very little of it. Just ask them.

Here, at openDemocracy, Noland and Haggard are joined by Tim Weeks.

You can read my review of their excellent new book here, and their response to my review here.