Posted on 01/06/2019 8:46:02 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Lee Oui-ryuk was on the verge of dying of starvation when he stole a block of tofu in a market in North Korea at the height of a nationwide famine. Too weak to run away after he swiped the food, Lee continued eating as the seller cried and beat him with a metal rod, staining the white tofu red with his blood.
At nine years old he knew the theft would end in violence, but in his head he repeated over and over: “Even if you are beaten, keep eating.” He eventually passed out and when he awoke, took a morsel that remained on his hand to his sister.
“Even today I don’t have the words to describe the hunger,” Lee said. “My head was too big for my body because I was so malnourished and my neck couldn’t support the weight, which meant my head was always at a slant.”
More than two decades later Lee is no longer starving. The 31-year-old lives in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, where he can have virtually any dish delivered to his home with a few taps on his smartphone. But his experiences in the North forever changed his relationship with food and he often craves dishes invented by a chronically hungry nation.
“In North Korea every single thing I ate was related to my life, and even the smallest things would seem really big,” he said. “But here I just eat food because it’s a part of living.”
Many of the roughly 30,000 North Korean refugees living in the South are awestruck when they first arrive at seeing supermarkets stocked with items unseen back home. But they also find it difficult to cope with the plethora of choice and still carrying the trauma of growing up hungry.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Meanwhile, Fat Boy is fat.
I read an interview with a defector who said the most shocking thing was how much food was thrown away. A garbage can in South Korea would be a buffet in the north. Yeltsin wept when he toured a supermarket in Houston. Liberals want to throw all of this away.
Must be truly awful to be starving.
Scene from Moscow on the Husdon: coffee, coffee, coffee
Although I grew up here in America, I can tell you that it is.
I have first hand knowledge. At nearly 13 years old I weighed 72 lbs. Not by choice.
There’s no reason for a famine in the U.S. except bad policy. If it ever happens that will drain the swamp, because they’ll all be massacred by starving Americans.
Never knew Boris Yeltsin had visited the U.S.
That he would weep at American abundance, though a member of the ruling nomenklatura elite for decades, with access to special stores and food sources, is telling in itself.
The MiG-25 defector Viktor Belyenko when touring an American supermarket near CIA headquarters in Virginia, was convinced it was a sham, a Potemkin village false front & nothing more.
It’s stories like this that make me give thanks to God that I’m an American. Comparing our lot to those in other countries greatly contributes to personal contentment.
Liberals look at the plethora of goods available in the west and hate it. They refuse to believe that socialism cannot work and believe that “right people” aren’t in charge..
One of the most striking was his first visit to an American super market, and how unbelievable it was.
He was later visited at one point by completely lockstep communist aunt and uncle from then Soviet Union, and when they were taken to an American super market (I'll paraphrase here, but this is quite close) they began to cry and said in Russian that their lives had been wasted.
And now, however, something that I simply do not understand. The current Russian emigres (if I understand reports from friends and acquaintances correctly) somehow tend to be anti-American.
Truly sorry for the trauma you endured.
That is very kind of you. I knew I was always hungry, but I didn’t know what it was to be otherwise. So I was never traumatized in that way.
When I moved to NY (near my 13th birthday), and at my Grandparents I could eat whenever and whatever I wanted - I gained 20 lbs in under 2 weeks! I never was overweight though, LOL, until my late forties.
Blaine Harden discussed his historical narrative Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.
The book tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in captivity at North Korea prison camp 14 and escaped in 2005. Mr. Harden said he was the only individual actually born in a labor camp to escape. Shin escaped through an electrified fence by climbing over a dead companion’s body.
Mr. Harden explained that Camp 14 holds approximately 15,000 prisoners and is the toughest of North Korea’s six camps due to the brutal working conditions and vigilance of the guards. He related Shin’s witnessing the execution of his mother and brother. Harden detailed Shin’s adjustment to society and civilization, and their meeting for a newspaper story.
Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
* Shin Dong-Hyuk my be an imperfect witness who has admitted some elements of his personal story have changed over time.
I read the whole article and found not one mention why the north is dirt poor and starving and the south is prosperous and awash in food.
I guess the Guardian thinks it must be just bad luck. Or maybe the climate changed north of the DMZ. Could there possibly be another reason? Isn’t it curious that they aren’t curious about it?
I worked with a Chinese man who survived the Great Leap Forward in China where there was a lot of starvation. He said one time he was so hungry he took a ration card and ate all of the food he could buy with it. A ration card is for a whole family for a week. He has felt tremendous guilt for that for the rest of his life, and swore to always control his hunger from that time on.
I talked to a Chinese man who was imprisoned by the Communists during Mao’s famine.
He said they had a daily formation, where they had to stand in their shorts, with their heels and knees together. An inspector would check if their thighs were so emaciated, that his fist could fit between. When it could, they were judged to be near death, and would be moved to another area away from sight.
My sister in law visited us in the US from China in the 1980’s her favorite “tourist”attraction was a supermarket
OMG. So sorry.
Thanks for posting that...I read the interview.
The amazing thing is that as it said..he grew up in hell but he turned out to have some normal feelings like guilt. It would be quite interesting to know how he’s really doing now. Also he was quite smart for not knowing a thing about the outside world. An incredible story that most of us will never truly comprehend.
If the North falls those 30k defectors will have an important job waiting for them back home. They can start by helping identify the sadistic guards in the camps. Don’t wait for them to get away like they did at Dacau/Auschwitz.
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