Extortion for Domestic Consumption

This, coming from a regime that offers little more than propaganda for its people to consume:

Upon seeing signs that the food situation is becoming serious, factory managers are moving to soothe workers, saying, “Great amounts of food will come from foreign countries in January, so don’t worry so much. However, the workers reactions are not ones of great relief, because it is not clear whether that foreign food aid would be distributed to workers even if it did arrive.

It has been confirmed that the North Korean authorities have been holding lectures on the subject for factories and other enterprises, “With respect to the latest situation,” since the 7th of this month.

Daily NK’s source boiled down the contents of the lecture, “The Americans are on bended knee, begging, “˜Now, let’s keep close relations with North Korea,’ since their economic sanctions did not work. Our General (Kim Jong Il) will now make those Americans offer rice directly.

Last Saturday, at a lecture for cadres entitled, “Our Republic (North Korea)’s firm measures, and prospects for the construction of the strong and prosperous state,” the authorities asserted that, “The imperialists and opportunist countries (China and Russia) are frightened by our Republic’s determined measures over the Six Party Talks. They are pressing us to have a dialogue with them by bringing presents. [Daily NK]

Visitors to Pyongyang occasionally remark that they see North Koreans re-using USAID rice sacks and believe that to be proof that North Koreans know of the U.S. government’s generosity, and that the North Korean regime’s attitudes toward us have softened. The truth is that the North Korean regime casts American aid as the bounty of the Great General’s merciless and skillful extortion of the quivering, obsequious Yankees. At times, I’ve wondered how far that’s been from the truth. The reality is probably closer to the sort of great power behavior that Kipling described a century ago.

The fact that North Korea’s crops have failed yet again is no excuse for people going hungry. Plenty of nations that can’t grow enough food for their populations, for various reasons, manage to import enough to make up for the shortfall, and North Korea has sufficient foreign exchange to purchase higher priority needs like Italian yachts, expensive booze, enough glass to cover an empty skyscraper, and luxury cars for its generals and Inner Party bureaucrats. This is a socialist, centrally planned economy, after all. All North Korea has to do is follow the same code of conduct that applies to every other food aid donee on earth and allow transparent aid distribution, according to need, not party loyalty or political classification. But because North Korea’s regime uses food as a weapon against its “hostile” and “wavering” classes, it would rather would have mass starvation and reject American food aid than let its people eat from anyone else’s rice bowl.