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 newspaper said.

According to the newspaper, which is seen as closely linked to the Pyongyang leadership, the new noodles have twice as much protein and fives times as much fat as ordinary noodles. “When you consume ordinary noodles (made from wheat or corn), you may soon feel your stomach empty. But this soybean noodle delays such a feeling of hunger,” it said on its website. The noodles would be available soon across North Korea, the newspaper said. [BBC; hat tip]

What the report doesn’t make clear is how exactly this “breakthrough” adds to the available food supply, if at all (for that matter, the same could be said of the Ryugyong Hotel or highly enriched uranium; wouldn’t it make more sense to spend those resources on importing some corn?). Factories to process food aren’t much use if there’s no raw material to process, unless the raw material is the by-products of those crops. Historically, the regime has “solved” hunger by feeding people inedible hulls, cobs, and stalks that are mostly cellulose, which the human digestive system was never designed to process.

The appearance of stories about technological breakthroughs in food production tend to coincide with episodes of famine, and maybe, we can suppose, popular discontent about famine. Recently, the regime has announced the ability to make noodles from such stuff as , , and , which have to be leached of their natural tannin content to be edible. Not that those are bad for you, provided of course that agricultural production can deliver raw materials to all of those whizbang new factories.

Approximately as dependable as the harvest itself are perennial reports about new factories that make noodles, crackers, and even rice from potatoes. Observe: , , , , , , . Each report claims a new breakthrough, although the technological substance of each year’s breakthrough is hardly distinguishable from the last. What all of them have in common is that none of them predates a solution to North Korea’s endemic hunger, which occasionally wanes, but never disappears.

In relatively less lean times, the official reports mostly talk about food in the same way they talk about everything else — from a nationalist perspective, speaking of Chosun’s “unique food culture” or celebratory feasts for this-or-that Supremo’s birthday, with frequent stories about the Okryu Noodle Restaurant in Pyongyang. In leaner times, state media try to fend off panic with reports of miracle foods.

There is a close correlation between periods of famine and the appearance of official exhortations about substitute foods. This year’s reports are the first such reports since the spring of 1999, just after the peak of the Great Famine. Curiously, the earliest mention of “substitute” foods occurs , although North Korea was probably in famine conditions as early as 1993, and the S.T.A.L.I.N. archives go back to January of 1996. Thereafter, KCNA carries more stories encouraging the production and of .

In most cases, the regime that the consumption of substitute foods was undesireable, speaking of “the difficult conditions where they have to eat food substitute due to an acute shortage of food caused by years of natural disasters.” At other times, the consumption of those foods implicitly portrayed as undesireable, but also as an act of patriotic self-sacrifice. In some stories, they were even portrayed as a part of the Brave New Soilent World into which North Korean techology was leading the world:

Every encouragement is given to produce substitute food in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Korean people are still pressed for food because of the continued economic blockade by the enemy and natural disasters. To cope with this, steps have been taken to increase agricultural production as well as to take substitute food. Detailed arrangements have been made to produce substitute food through introducing science. The Ministry of Food Administration delivered several tons of seed of amaranth [OFK: In case you’re wondering] to provinces early this year. [….] Its cultivation has stood the test and it is now in wide use in people’s diets. Amaranth is processed into noodle, bread, pancake, cake, sweets and confectionery, soy and beanpaste. An exhibition of over 120 kinds of food drew public attention in Kangso district, Nampho. These food items were made of 100 tons of amaranth, the first crops this year. [….] Other plants are also in wide use for substitute food. []

One aspect of alternative of substitute foods state media never mentioned was how they affect those who eat it:

Manufactured “alternative food” consists of cabbage stalks, cornstalks and grasses ground up and mixed with some cereal and an enzyme to make noodles or cakes.

“This locally manufactured alternative food has very little nutritional content and is basically a stomach filler,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator David Morton said in a statement. “We have seen that eating it can cause serious problems such as digestive difficulties, particularly among the children and the elderly.” [CNN, May 11, 1999]

Judging by state media reports, the worst of the famine must have passed , when the state media suddenly began reporting that the people substitute foods. The recovery must have been gradual, as those reports continued through 2001.

The new reemergence of “substitute” food stories in the official media likely signals a new desperation in the food situation. That’s especially so when you realize that the North Korea people have already watched their loved ones die from eating grass and cornstalks. Even in North Korea, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The NGO Good Friends tells us that it has been happening again this year:

Furthermore, in regions like Shingye County, and Hwangju County, there is news that there are now cases of people dying from grass poisoning in addition to starvation. The citizens of these areas have been subsisting on grass porridge because of the lack of rations, but because they have not been properly preparing the grass for consumption, they are falling victim to grass poisoning. On farms in North Hwanghae Province, it is understood that on average, 3-4 people are dying daily. Because of this, wails and exhortations can be heard coming from different villages. [Good Friends No. 137, June 2008]

Substitute foods probably never really disappeared from the North Korean diet. Recall this 2005 report in which a North Korean dissident “guerrilla camera” brought back footage of a teenage soldier sent home to die of starvation because substitute foods had destroyed his digestive system. In a society that puts such emphasis on “military first,” and where military service is regarded as an iron rice bowl, it’s reasonable to infer that the civilian population was eating at least as badly as the junior enlisted soldiers.

See Also: The Soylent Green connection also occurred to Richardson.

One More: While searching for the term “substitute food” in the KNCA archives (using the invaluable S.T.A.L.I.N.) I found a recent and rather extraordinary claim by official state media that the Japanese ate Korean comfort women as a “substitute food.” Ick. As brutal as the Japanese were, this seems a bit far-fetched.