Posted on 06/04/2008 1:37:32 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
FOOD shortages are gripping North Korea and there are signs some of its citizens may be starving to death, experts and rights activists say.
Food rations across much of North Korea have been slashed, and the country's 1.1million-strong military reportedly stopped major exercises so soldiers could help raise crops, according to reports out of South Korea.
After a three-year hiatus, the Bush administration is resuming food supplies to North Korea, The Australian reports.
A US freighter carrying bulk grain is sailing to make the first delivery of about 500,000 tonnes of food that Washington promised last month to the Kim Jong-il regime to be delivered over the next year.
But experts said most of the US food would arrive too late to help with critical pre-harvest food shortages that intensified by the day and were likely to remain bad until August harvests.
"I would describe the situation as very serious," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "What we are seeing now are pre-famine indicators.
"Some hunger-related deaths are probably inevitable, if they haven't already started."
Dozens of South Korean religious and civic leaders on Monday demanded that the new Government of conservative President Lee Myung-bak relax its hard line on North Korea and deliver emergency food supplies, even if North Korea spurns the offer.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...

I read a book about a guy who grew up in a NK concentration camp. He escaped to South Korea. For days, he would just wander through grocery stores in utter amazement. He couldn’t believe that much food existed in one place.
N. Korea must have been one of the countries that Obama was thinking of when he said the rest of the world won’t let us eat as much as we want anymore.
Have they given the chinese their trains back, yet?
even without a war, when the peninsula is reunited, it’s going to take most of South Korea’s GDP to rebuild the North.
I wanna know what he’s seeing up in the sky. He never looks at the little people, just over their heads.
And you can bet that if he gets in office and taxes the socks off of us, “change” is all we’ll have left...pennys, dimes, and a Susan B Anthony or two
the little voices.
They could start sooner if we quit feeding the NK Army.
AMEN! This administration has definately got a case of the stupids when in comes to NK.
“A US freighter carrying bulk grain is sailing to make the first delivery of about 500,000 tonnes of food that Washington promised last month to the Kim...”
Why do we subsidize tyranny? The food will be repackaged with North Korean labels and then be distributed to the party, then the military, in that order. Those who are starving will continue to starve.
Marxism is great! Have “hope”, “change we can believe in”, and “yes we can!” LOL
Marxism is great! Have “hope”, “change we can believe in”, and “yes we can!” LOL
Yeah, he was a kid when most of his family were thrown into a NK gulag becuase Grandpa was a big mouth. Pres. Bush read it and I think anyone with any interest in Korean politics should read this book.
check out the cover of the latest edition of the Onion.
Well. the army will eat better and the bureaucrats will eat well and the people will starve knowing the guardians of the nation are fit and on the job.
“”Some hunger-related deaths are probably inevitable, if they haven’t already started.”
The deaths have never stopped.
Obama’s remarks that Americans won’t be able to eat as much or set their thermostats to 72F as usual are a real danger sign. We have been warned. In fact, I haven’t been more concerned in all my life. I will literally fight to death to avoid being starved to death by communists.
The Democrats are bound and determined to impose an irrational form of rationing upon the American People in the form of Carbon Trading.
Paradise replete with 72 virgins.
I’ve been reading that the people are starving to death in N Korea for 10 years. I can’t believe it anymore. How could there be any left?
Food is scarce because this is how the commies raise money to support their fetid system.
10 million in Ukraine and 60 million in China.
That is a great book but it can be tough to endure.
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