Fear and Loathing Across the Tumen, Part 1
The Times of London sent correspondent Jane Macartney to China’s border with North Korea and found that the refugees there are reporting a rapidly deteriorating food situation, deepening discontent with the regime, and more willingness than ever to express that discontent openly. The editors of the Times are shocked enough by the report to write these cogent words in an editorial:
Of all the atrocities of modern history, famine is the least commemorated. It is an agonising mass death sentence imposed, invariably, by a non-democratic regime. With the possible exception of Mao’s China during the Great Leap Forward, no tyranny has acted with greater ruthlessness in perpetuating its people’s sufferings than North Korea. The Times reported this weekend that famine is an imminent prospect in the isolated prison-state. Hunger killed millions of North Koreans in the 1990s, and threatens to do so again. [Times Online]
In the coming days, expect to see more good reporting of this kind finding the same trends. Macartney’s reporting is must-reading, and I’ll give you some extended excerpts so that they’ll be here in the archives for the long haul:
The Times met four women in a safe house in China this week who fled recently across the frontier. They described despair in North Korea at the growing prospect of starvation in the Stalinist state. The youngest, only 16, crossed the frozen river last month. The other three, in their 50s, left last year and were tight-lipped about how they got out because they must go back to help the families they left behind.
While snow falls outside, Choi Kum Ok squats on the floor of an anonymous apartment not far from the border. Her eyes fill with tears as she talks of the son she had to leave behind. “I came over to earn money for his medical care. I need to get him food or he will starve.
She covers her face and sobs as she remembers the 1990s, when harvests failed and up to 10 per cent of the population starved. She lost a sibling. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
A former security guard and member of the elite ruling Workers’ Party, she cannot understand how the leaders that she still worships could have failed their people so completely.The flow of refugees from North Korea has slowed to a trickle in recent years, as Pyongyang has issued shoot-to-kill orders to guards, and China has lost patience with the arrivals. Beijing — nervous about instability across its border — props up the nuclear-armed regime with oil and food. [Times Online, Jane Macartney]
Macartney’s subjects report widespread disgust at The Great Confiscation.
Song Hee, a round-faced 16-year-old, said: “Some tossed the money into the river. I even heard one man burnt his notes. The money has the face of Kim Il Sung on it, so it’s like you’re burning the Great Leader — and that’s a crime. The man was executed. Really, it’s a true story. It happened in Chongjin city.
True or apocryphal, the rumour reflects an unprecedented sense of dissatisfaction with the leadership of a rogue nuclear power that the West is trying to corral.
In a country where obedience equals survival and where Kim Il Sung, the late Great Leader, and Kim Jong Il, his son and successor, the Dear Leader, are revered as divine, opposition is almost unheard of. The currency reform, however, was deeply unpopular. One woman said: “People complained. It’s not like it was. Everyone has an opinion.
Such grumbling is voiced only among those who trust one another. Song Hee said: “If people hear you, then you get sent to prison.
There are also reports of starvation again, although we saw reports like this for all of the last five years.
“My son tells me people are already dying of hunger again,” she says. “In the 1990s I would see dead bodies lying in the streets and now this could happen again.
She sends back anything she can. “I hear from my son. He tells me he has no food. He will starve. I have to do something.
Ordinary citizens are also confirming that the grooming process for Kim Jong Eun has begun. I consider reports like this more persuasive than rumors passed along by high-level mucketymucks.
Before they left, all had attended political sessions at which they learnt that Kim Jong Il was to have a successor: his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong Un. Jeong Hee Ok said: “He is very young, not even 30, and very intelligent. We are happy because he will bring new ideas.
Some North Koreans continue to be astonished by the comparative quality of conditions in China.
“We can’t eat, but we know people outside can. In China, they throw away rice, while we haven’t seen white rice for so long. It’s like the difference between Heaven and Earth.
Unlike the other women, who whispered, Mrs Li raises her voice with confidence. “All North Koreans know that even during the Japanese occupation they didn’t live in such terrible conditions. She pauses. “My son thinks something might happen. And then she gives voice to thoughts that mean she can never return. “I don’t believe any more. The general [Kim Jung Il] is doing a bad job and people want change. Why will the son do better?”
Separately, the Korea Times reports that for others, the discontent manifests itself in a sort of Ostalgie for Kim Il Sung:
“When the late leader was in power, people had no worries over meals. The merit-based system was in place during the period, and residents were encouraged to work harder,” said the release, citing a North Korean reporter. [Korea Times]
South Koreans are arguing about whether they should speak of collapse openly, but not even the left-winger Park Jie-Won really denies that there should be quiet planning for it, behind closed doors.
The Japan Times also sees a rising risk of instability arising from The Great Confiscation, and calls for urgent contingency planning. I would agree that the signs of instability and violence are growing, but it’s far from certain that that instability will sweep the Kim Dynasty onto the dustbin of history.