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

Good Friends Newsletter Number 138 is here:

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 year due to overall food shortages. The Support Bureau requested that the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces address the problem of military food shortages. All soldiers with children under 12 have been ordered to send away their wives and children to their or their wives’parents and live apart until November when they can get their family back upon receiving rations. This is the first time this kind of order has been given since the massive famine of the mid 1990’s.

For an alternative view, that North Korea is not headed into a mass-casualty famine, click here. Personally, I think a localized famine has clearly begun and is spreading, and that things are already looking bad for next year as well.