Thread: Millions starving in North Korea - UN

NK is a tricky one. At what point do we nuke them, before or after they can nuke us back. Certainly can't take them on in a traditional war, too many of them, properly equiped, trained and payed using money derived from all the fucking food aid we've been sending them.

Originally Posted by Mr R Sole

but TD can't handle keeping a quote on the quick reply message when you change pages

just copy and paste from the quick reply box at the bottom as you change pages

Good, love the Dear Leader - you die, kiss his foot, before.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

how is the West to blame ? because we keep putting their leader in a corner because "we don't like him"

if we weren't so stupid, we wouldn't feed his paranoia by making silly statements like "raging a financial war" on NK or "isolating" them internationally, it simply doesn't work

We did the same with Cuba and that didn't work

We did the same with Iraq and that didn't work

Whatever, the truth is that Dear Arsehole has failed his people. Congratulations, for being a knobhead apologist for that C[at]NT!

IMHO butterfly is the best troll i've seen in a long time

Don't think old Kim is long for this world. Maybe a new leader will help. I hope so because NK is not developing rockets to entertain the kids on American Independance day are they? They don't need a massive army any more and I'm sure the tourist would go if they could. Place could be in the pink as new destinations are always well subscribed to. Same as Burma, new leader better life for everyone.

Drought hits key food province in N. Korea
Jun 16, 2012


In this May 25, 2012 photo, a North Korean farmer gathers water as he tries to irrigate a field at the Tokhae cooperative farm on the outskirts of Nampho, North Korea. North Korea is reporting a serious drought that could worsen already critical food shortages, but help is unlikely to come from the United States and South Korea following Pyongyang's widely criticized rocket launch.
PHOTO: AP

SEOUL (AFP) - A long and widespread drought has ravaged one of North Korea's breadbasket provinces, state media say, sparking fears of worsening food shortages in the impoverished communist state.

'Most areas of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Hwanghae province in particular, have experienced a long spell of drought,' Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Friday's report said crops were withering due to the most serious drought in the western province in 60 years - hitting maize, wheat, barley and potato crops.

Essential rice and corn planting have also been badly affected across the country, KCNA said last month.

straitstimes.com

It is woeful that they still have the money for nuclear weaponry and space projects but they cant feed their poor people.
They do put on good military parades and are pretty good at gymnastics and syncronised swimming though.

Starve the people, feed the army. Simple. Been doing it for years.

Military Fails to Feed Itself
Reported by Young Chung for RFA’s Korean service.
Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.
2012-07-13

North Korea’s soldiers are finding it tough raising animals and planting crops to feed themselves.


North Korean soldiers march in a parade to mark 100 years since the birth of Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012.
AFP

North Korea is trying to combat malnutrition among its soldiers by encouraging them to raise livestock and grow enough food for themselves but the effort has met with little success.

Individual units of the Korean People’s Army have been tasked with raising animals and growing their own crops since February 2011, when current North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—then vice chairman of the Central Military Commission— initiated a campaign to have them provide their own food.

The movement called for soldiers in the 1.2 million-strong army to wipe out malnutrition by breeding their own goats and rabbits.

But the program faced a stumbling block due to a lack of feed for the animals, a representative of a human rights organization that works in North Hamgyong province told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The source, who keeps in regular contact with servicemen in the North Korea-China border area, said they told him that most military units have failed to raise enough animals to eat.

“They are ordered to raise animals from rabbits to goats and dogs but they say that they can’t. There’s nothing to feed the animals,” he said.

Goats and rabbits

After the units received the orders from the military’s General Political Bureau last year, each unit organized a side job team for raising animals and aimed to raise 100 goats, he said.

Units built special quarters for the job, and groups of men were given time off of work to travel to obtain goats and rabbits for the units to start breeding, he said.

But since they didn’t have any grass to graze on or other animal feed, the goats were undernourished, he said.

As for the rabbits, the soldiers’ officers ate them without leaving enough to breed, the source said.

One unit in South Hamgyong province, the communications battalion of Training Center 108 located near the mountains, lacked suitable land for the goats to graze, so they let the animals run loose in nearby cornfields.

The roaming goats caused a furor among nearby residents, prompting them to blame Kim Jong Un for the campaign, saying he showed little concern for how the animals affected nearby civilians, the source said.

Looting

Another source said soldiers had trouble finding enough seeds and fertilizer to grow crops and vegetables.

Seung-chul Baek, a North Korean defector familiar with the situations of the Army Corps 9 in North Hamgyong province, said the unit had failed to grow adequate food.

“This year, they received Kim Jong Un’s order to farm. So each unit organized a team to find new land and focused on farming. But due to lack of seeds, fertilizers and other farming materials, they had no success in farming either.”

He said another group of soldiers in Kangwon province in the southern part of the country which was unable to grow enough of their own food had turned to looting nearby residents.

“Since raising animals became a life and death struggle for these military servicemen ... residents of Kangwon Province have given up on their own animals [for them],” he said.

Unable to endure the hunger, some of the servicemen turned to thievery, he said.

“In Kangwon province, the men suddenly turned into robbers and attacked people passing by and stole animals.”

Food shortages

In 2010, several international charities raised money to send giant rabbits to North Korea to boost the food supply. The aim was that North Koreans would use them to breed a cheap source of protein, but what happened to the rabbits after they reached the country was unknown.

North Korea has been reeling from persistent food shortages since a famine in the mid-1990s that resulted in several million deaths, and relies on foreign aid to feed its people.

The lack of food security in the nation has led to the proliferation of an underground market economy, which authorities have largely tolerated because of the failures of the public distribution system to sufficiently provide rations for the population.

In April, the U.S. suspended planned food shipments to North Korea in following a rocket launch Washington said breached a February deal, under which Pyongyang agreed to a partial nuclear freeze and a missile and nuclear test moratorium in return for 240,000 tons of U.S. food aid.

The aid package had been expected to target the neediest in North Korea, including malnourished young children and pregnant women.

rfa.org

My country cut off a planned food aid program after that joke of a Misile launch a few months back. Apparently fat Hillary and company have not figured out that all the people who had the power to authorize or cancel the launch are likely eating just fine.

N Korea reform plans keep families hungry
Saturday28/7/2012

Talk that North Korea’s young leader plans to reform the broken economy is already having an impact. It’s helping send rice prices even further out of the reach of most families in one of the world’s most under-fed societies.

Seo Jae-pyoung, a defector who now lives in South Korea, spoke this week to a friend in the secretive North who had furtively called him by mobile phone from a mountain-side to plead for cash to be smuggled across to help.

“He couldn’t cope with the high prices, saying rice prices had shot up ... and he is running out of money,” Seo said.

“It shows that the economic situation is seriously worsening...I feel that...(it) has already reached the critical point and (leader Kim Jong-un) may know that without reform or openness, the regime is not going to last long.”

One of the reasons he and others gave for the price increase was rice hoarding by middlemen hoping that talk of reform would materialise into a chance to turn a profit.

A source with ties to North Korea and its chief backer, China, said last week that the North is gearing up to experiment with economic reforms.

Evidence is hard to come by in the almost hermetically sealed and suspicious state, where casual contact with outsiders can mean imprisonment. And because it usually takes defectors many months to make their way out of the North to a country where they can speak openly, information can be out of date.

But some of the defectors Reuters spoke to in Seoul said they were in clandestine contact with people inside the North. Reuters also spoke to foreigners who had gone to North Korea in recent months under government-sponsored visits.

The overall impression was that in the about seven months Kim Jong-un has been in office, there have been few tangible changes inside a country which is now, since Myanmar’s decision to open up, Asia’s last pariah state.

gulf-times.com