North Korea
2012-05-21 10:03 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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omonatheydidNorth Koreans in rice belt 'starve to death'
Food shortages have worsened in North Korea, even in the southwestern rice belt where some residents have starved to death, a Seoul-based online newspaper said Monday.
"Because of worsening food shortages this year there were reports of people starving to death even in South and North Hwanghae provinces," a Daily NK reporter told AFP, referring to the country's agricultural heartland.
Six people -- children or the elderly -- died in just one village in Shingye county after the authorities released an emergency supply of only one or two kilograms (2.2-4.4 pounds) of corn to each household, the paper said.
It quoted another source as saying that about 10 people had died of starvation on each collective farm in and around the coastal city of Haeju by April, following shortages in late winter.
Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group, also said on its website that starvation continued to claim victims throughout South Hwanghae. At Hwanghae Steelworks some workers had died because food rations stopped, it said.
The South's unification ministry, which handles cross-border affairs, said it had no information.
Daily NK said North and South Hwanghae saw rice production fall last year due to flooding, and most of the autumn harvest was diverted to military stores or for citizens of Pyongyang.
In South Hwanghae shortages were aggravated by restrictions on market trading and travel during the 100-day mourning period for leader Kim Jong-Il, who died on December 17, it said.
Near the border with the South soldiers were mobilised for farming because many farm workers left to seek help from relatives in other areas, it said.
The North's official food distribution system, part of its state-directed economy, largely collapsed during the famine years of the mid to-late 1990s.
Severe food shortages have persisted. But donations to UN programmes have dwindled due to international irritation at the North's missile and nuclear programmes.
The United States suspended a plan to deliver 240,000 tonnes of food after the North's latest rocket launch on April 13.
On Monday the North's official Korean Central News Agency expressed concern about drought in western areas, which it said had received little rainfall in the past few weeks.
Water levels in the country's major irrigation reservoirs stood at just over 55 percent of normal because of unusually high temperatures, which were expected to last until early June, it said.
Source: bangkokpost
North Korea's Gulag
New evidence reveals a vast, cruel network of prison camps.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak deserves praise for one accomplishment above all others: He has put human rights in North Korea on the world's agenda. This certainly has hit a nerve in Pyongyang. The late Kim Jong Il cut off talks with the South, and now Kim Jong Eun has embarked on a campaign of abuse against President Lee that is vile even by that regime's standards.
A new report by South Korea's National Human Rights Commission provides further vindication. It documents the suffering of Pyongyang's roughly 200,000 political prisoners, held in a network of labor camps across the country. The report contains detailed and harrowing accounts from 200 former prisoners. The shocking nature of the crimes they witnessed should convince the Obama Administration that making any deal to provide aid that extends the life of such a regime is immoral.
The report is broadly similar in content to one the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea published in April. The North's totalitarian system imprisons people for seemingly trivial offenses, such as singing a South Korean song, and one person's perceived disloyalty can doom an entire family. Once in the camps, prisoners suffer from malnutrition, exposure and overwork. Then there are guards who enjoy torturing those under their control, or play sadistic games with them.
Some may question the significance of exposing all of this, given that everyone already knows North Korea is not the workers' paradise it claims to be. But it is important that the Human Rights Commission, an independent and well-respected body funded by Seoul to safeguard human rights in the South, has put so much evidence on record. The testimonies could form the basis for a Nuremberg-style trial after the North collapses.
That might help prisoners right away. More and more information about the outside world filters into the North, especially among the elite, so officials responsible for the labor camps should become aware of the danger of future prosecution. Knowing that their crimes are being recorded will serve as a deterrent to gratuitous cruelty.
Of course, the agony will only truly end when the Kim family is overthrown. And based on the experience of the last two decades, that is unlikely as long as they can play the game of nuclear blackmail to extract the resources they need from Seoul, Washington and other donors. Exposing the true nature of the regime should refute claims that change through engagement is possible and close the aid spigots.
It is encouraging that South Korean public opinion toward the North has undergone a dramatic shift in this direction over the last few years, largely as a result of the growing number of defectors. More than 23,000 now live in the South, and their stories and concern for the families left behind have led to pressure on Beijing to stop repatriating North Korean refugees caught in China.
Consider the news this week of Kim Young-hwan's arrest in Dalian, China, where he was trying to help North Korean defectors. Mr. Kim is a member of the "386 generation," South Koreans who were born in the 1960s and fought for democracy in the 1980s. Like many of his fellow student leaders, Mr. Kim once sympathized with North Korea but has become disillusioned. He and many other former supporters of Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Myoo-hyun's "sunshine policy" of engagement now work in NGOs that broadcast into the North or publicize the refugees' stories.
Reports like these deserve wide attention so that the rest of the world has the same epiphany. Sustaining Pyongyang with aid only extends the misery of those imprisoned in the North's gulag.
Source: wall street journal
Food shortages have worsened in North Korea, even in the southwestern rice belt where some residents have starved to death, a Seoul-based online newspaper said Monday.
"Because of worsening food shortages this year there were reports of people starving to death even in South and North Hwanghae provinces," a Daily NK reporter told AFP, referring to the country's agricultural heartland.
Six people -- children or the elderly -- died in just one village in Shingye county after the authorities released an emergency supply of only one or two kilograms (2.2-4.4 pounds) of corn to each household, the paper said.
It quoted another source as saying that about 10 people had died of starvation on each collective farm in and around the coastal city of Haeju by April, following shortages in late winter.
Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group, also said on its website that starvation continued to claim victims throughout South Hwanghae. At Hwanghae Steelworks some workers had died because food rations stopped, it said.
The South's unification ministry, which handles cross-border affairs, said it had no information.
Daily NK said North and South Hwanghae saw rice production fall last year due to flooding, and most of the autumn harvest was diverted to military stores or for citizens of Pyongyang.
In South Hwanghae shortages were aggravated by restrictions on market trading and travel during the 100-day mourning period for leader Kim Jong-Il, who died on December 17, it said.
Near the border with the South soldiers were mobilised for farming because many farm workers left to seek help from relatives in other areas, it said.
The North's official food distribution system, part of its state-directed economy, largely collapsed during the famine years of the mid to-late 1990s.
Severe food shortages have persisted. But donations to UN programmes have dwindled due to international irritation at the North's missile and nuclear programmes.
The United States suspended a plan to deliver 240,000 tonnes of food after the North's latest rocket launch on April 13.
On Monday the North's official Korean Central News Agency expressed concern about drought in western areas, which it said had received little rainfall in the past few weeks.
Water levels in the country's major irrigation reservoirs stood at just over 55 percent of normal because of unusually high temperatures, which were expected to last until early June, it said.
Source: bangkokpost
North Korea's Gulag
New evidence reveals a vast, cruel network of prison camps.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak deserves praise for one accomplishment above all others: He has put human rights in North Korea on the world's agenda. This certainly has hit a nerve in Pyongyang. The late Kim Jong Il cut off talks with the South, and now Kim Jong Eun has embarked on a campaign of abuse against President Lee that is vile even by that regime's standards.
A new report by South Korea's National Human Rights Commission provides further vindication. It documents the suffering of Pyongyang's roughly 200,000 political prisoners, held in a network of labor camps across the country. The report contains detailed and harrowing accounts from 200 former prisoners. The shocking nature of the crimes they witnessed should convince the Obama Administration that making any deal to provide aid that extends the life of such a regime is immoral.
The report is broadly similar in content to one the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea published in April. The North's totalitarian system imprisons people for seemingly trivial offenses, such as singing a South Korean song, and one person's perceived disloyalty can doom an entire family. Once in the camps, prisoners suffer from malnutrition, exposure and overwork. Then there are guards who enjoy torturing those under their control, or play sadistic games with them.
Some may question the significance of exposing all of this, given that everyone already knows North Korea is not the workers' paradise it claims to be. But it is important that the Human Rights Commission, an independent and well-respected body funded by Seoul to safeguard human rights in the South, has put so much evidence on record. The testimonies could form the basis for a Nuremberg-style trial after the North collapses.
That might help prisoners right away. More and more information about the outside world filters into the North, especially among the elite, so officials responsible for the labor camps should become aware of the danger of future prosecution. Knowing that their crimes are being recorded will serve as a deterrent to gratuitous cruelty.
Of course, the agony will only truly end when the Kim family is overthrown. And based on the experience of the last two decades, that is unlikely as long as they can play the game of nuclear blackmail to extract the resources they need from Seoul, Washington and other donors. Exposing the true nature of the regime should refute claims that change through engagement is possible and close the aid spigots.
It is encouraging that South Korean public opinion toward the North has undergone a dramatic shift in this direction over the last few years, largely as a result of the growing number of defectors. More than 23,000 now live in the South, and their stories and concern for the families left behind have led to pressure on Beijing to stop repatriating North Korean refugees caught in China.
Consider the news this week of Kim Young-hwan's arrest in Dalian, China, where he was trying to help North Korean defectors. Mr. Kim is a member of the "386 generation," South Koreans who were born in the 1960s and fought for democracy in the 1980s. Like many of his fellow student leaders, Mr. Kim once sympathized with North Korea but has become disillusioned. He and many other former supporters of Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Myoo-hyun's "sunshine policy" of engagement now work in NGOs that broadcast into the North or publicize the refugees' stories.
Reports like these deserve wide attention so that the rest of the world has the same epiphany. Sustaining Pyongyang with aid only extends the misery of those imprisoned in the North's gulag.
Source: wall street journal
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 08:48 pm (UTC)So lemme get this straight. The dude was STILL screwing his people over from BEYOND THE GRAVE.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 01:19 am (UTC)No shit. -_-
The things that go on in those prison camps is enough to keep you humbled from day to day. It's a living nightmare. I wish we had more power to stop it. It should be one of the biggest priorities for the U.S. and the rest (well, not China) of the world but that looming nuclear threat is enough to shut everyone up...
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 07:54 am (UTC)I thought it might get a little better after Kim Jong-Il's death as Jong-Un was educated abroad and knows of the world beyond his country, but he's just a pawn in the bigwigs's game :( seriously though, how can you let people starve because you're celebrating the 'legacy' of your former ruler? Wtf is wrong with them?! Maybe I'm naive/don't know enough about this (very probable), but I don't get why the UN can't or won't step in and be like 'stop this nonsense' rather than just being all 'bad North Korea, you shouldn't do that! Human rights violations for you!' :/
[although obviously outside help has to tread carefully because of the threats and nuclear weapons and what not, I know that much]