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Category: Famine & Food Aid

January 28, 2010

The Great Confiscation Backfires, Badly

How can we tell that North Korea is in a state of self-inflicted economic chaos? When the regime can’t even conceal it from the barbarians. AFP, quoting an unidentified Western diplomat via Yonhap, reports that “[a]t the Koryo Hotel where many foreigners stay, the [North Korean won exchange] rate swung from 51 won to 120 in the space of a few hours on January 22.” Another report says that currently, prices in North Korea are “anyone’s guess” and that in...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
January 21, 2010

Great Confiscation Update

From the Daily NK: A defector, who spoke with his family in North Hamkyung Province on Tuesday, reported the news to the Daily NK, “I called my family to send some money to them as I had heard they were in trouble, and they told me that the current situation is unspeakably terrible. They live only by bartering with others. He explained further, “For now, state-designated prices are still not public, so people think that selling goods for cash now...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
January 18, 2010

Great. Now Even the North Koreans Are Doing the Jihad Thing.

I had meant to blog about North Korea’s simultaneous acceptance of South Korean food aid just as it declared a “holy war” against South Korea, but a nasty intestinal virus had other plans for the entire family for the last few days (and how was your weekend?). Still, I can’t less this pass without comment. For those of you who hadn’t heard, North Korea’s latest fit was over South Korean contingency planning for regime collapse in the North. Planning was...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Terrorism (NK)
January 9, 2010

2 Million Dead Later, Kim Jong Il Admits N. Korea One Vast Shithole

I can’t imagine Kim Jong Il (or more likely, his minions) would make this sort of subtle concession if the Bowibu was reporting that the peasants were singing his praises contentedly while dancing merrily to the accompaniment of their accordions: “The president has said that people should be allowed to eat white rice and meat soup, wear silk clothes and live under tiled roofs,” Kim Jong-Il was quoted as saying by Rodong. “But we’ve so far failed to carry out...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda
January 3, 2010

Christian Groups Claim to Smuggle Food Into North Korea

Does anyone know anything about these people, and are they legit? I know some of you think I’ve been tough on Robert Park, but when I compare what he did to what these people are doing, there’s simply no comparing the relative capacity of the two techniques to change lives and minds. Even to plenty of us non-believers, things like this are so admirable that they’ve persuaded me that Christianity will be Kim Jong Il’s undoing and North Korea’s rebirth....

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Religion/Robert Park
December 31, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates: Regime Turns Attention to Foreign Currency

The North Korean People’s Safety Agency has declared a “complete prohibition of foreign currency usage. The decree was issued on December 26th and went into effect on Monday 28th. A source inside North Hamkyung Province reported, “A People’s Safety Agency declaration on banning the use of U.S. dollars, Yuan and the Euro was publicized on the 26th. The declaration was posted in public places and in every workplace starting this morning. The title of the declaration is, “On punishing severely...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
December 18, 2009

Kim Jong Il’s Trickle-Up Economics Starve North Korea’s Poor

After the Great Confiscation was announced, the Daily NK had supposed that the poorest or North Korea’s poor wouldn’t be hurt as badly as those with more savings to lose. To its credit, the paper is now correcting that supposition, having grasped a concept that probably isn’t taught in North Korean schools — supply-side economics: The source said, “Due to the bill exchange, business went bad and the authorities are cracking down on private trade in food, so problems for...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
December 15, 2009

Chosun Ilbo: North Korea Executes 12 After Currency Riot in Hamhung

Now that many North Koreans have burned the savings that the regime suddenly declared worthless this month, the Chosun Ilbo reports that public outrage has forced Kim Jong Il to raise the exchange limit to 500,000 won. The decision coincides with the first report of a significant outbreak of anti-regime violence, followed by a brutal reaction: The announcements came after rioting by market traders in the Hamhung region was reported on Dec. 5-6 amid sympathy from ordinary people, sources said....

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/NK Economics/Resistance
December 1, 2009

Hiding North Korea’s Health Decline

According to a new report by the U.N. Population Fund, the socioeconomic gap between the two Koreas continues to widen: South Korea’s infant mortality rate ranked seventh in the world with four deaths out of 1,000 births while the North slid to 133rd place from last year’s ranking of 99 with 47 deaths per 1,000. The Stalinist state recorded a higher death rate of women from complications related to pregnancy and labor with an estimated 370 cases per 100,000 live...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Useful Idiocy
November 25, 2009

Feed Me, Seymour

It’s a fine line between extortion and aggressive panhandling. Inexplicably, extortion and outright terrorism have failed to produce a financial harvest (until now, a perennial success) to make up for the agricultural kind (since 1993, a perennial failure). Suddenly, a slightly more obsequious North Korea is … begging for South Korea to resume those Kumgang Tours and for the U.N. to keep its commitments on the delivery of food aid. If there’s one word in the North Korean vocabulary more...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
October 27, 2009

Mixed Reviews for North Korea’s “150-Day Battle”

The word from inside North Korea is that it fell far short of its stated goals, and that the people are still starving in the dark. The sum total appears to be that people did a lot of work that ultimately accomplished only short-term gains in “core” areas of the country: At the end of this September, a high level source stated that according to North Korea it hit a new record of agricultural production from the 150-day battle, which...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
October 18, 2009

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....

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Propaganda
October 13, 2009

ROK Food Aid Policy Misses the Point

Is Seoul’s resumption of food aid about saving lives, national pride, or something else? The government has decided to resume food aid to North Korea, which was stopped in summer 2007, and is considering when to start and how much to give. [….] Another government official said the government is considering giving “10,000 to 30,000 tons” of food. If Seoul were to resume food aid on the scale of previous administrations, which was between 300,000 and 400,000 tons, it “would...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
September 23, 2009

Pictures of the North Korean Countryside Show a Lean Year Unfolding

The photos are worth seeing, though I see no other evidence to support the photographer’s contention that the regime is relaxing its suppression of religion. A photograph of what are probably Peoples’ Safety Agency agents “praying” at a sham church in Pyongyang is not evidence that supports that contention. On the other hand, there are numerous reports emerging from North Korea which support the contention that this year’s harvest will be way down from recent years, which themselves have been...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
September 15, 2009

And Yet, Christine Ahn Wants You to Know that Sanctions Kill North Korean Babies

Italian customs recently confiscated 420 bottles of expensive liquor on their way to North Korea. Italian newspaper Vivere Ancona said customs in the eastern port city seized 150 bottles of brandy and 270 bottles of whisky in containers destined for North Korea at the end of last month. The confiscation follows a UN Security Council ban on the export of arms, high technology and luxury goods to North Korea after the communist country’s nuclear test in May. The liquor is...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Sanctions/Useful Idiocy
August 31, 2009

Flowers Bloom, Birds Fly North, North Korean Harvest Fails

Even when you consider the potential consequences, it’s getting difficult to sustain a state of alarm about North Korea’s food situation when alarming statistics about food prices in North Korea’s black markets have become just so much perennial growth: Except that there is a difference: unlike last year’s famine scare, when the price of rice (the food of the “loyal” classes) rose as much as the price of corn (the food of the “expendable” classes), this year, it’s corn prices...

Categories Famine & Food Aid
August 12, 2009

Mary Robinson Is Not Worthy

President Obama, for God-knows-what reason, has decided to award former U.N. bureaucrat Mary Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.  Years ago, I expressed my intense distaste for Mary Robinson: Mary Robinson was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2001, during the height of the Great North Korean Famine, while China flagrantly violated the U.N. Convention on Refugees to keep the starving millions outside its borders. While millions more died in a...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights
July 27, 2009

Yachting the River Styx and the Lies of Christine Ahn

Several of you e-mailed me about the story of the luxury yachts that North Korea had attempted to purchase from the Italian manufacturer Azimuth-Benetti.  I started a post and didn’t finish it, partially because that post became something long-winded, disjointed, and unpublishable.  Meanwhile, a few more details have trickled in about the boats and the purchase.  Contrary to doubts expressed in earlier reports, Italian authorities have concluded that the boats were indeed for His Withering Majesty, although you have to...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Sanctions