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N. Korea moves millions to farms
Washington Times Insider ^ | June 2, 2005 | Nicole Winfield

Posted on 06/02/2005 6:49:44 AM PDT by prairiebreeze

ROME -- North Korea is sending millions of people from its cities to work on farms each weekend -- another indication that the risk of famine is particularly high this year, a U.N. official said yesterday.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is the only aid organization that has a presence outside the North Korean capital,.

"It's not a new phenomenon, but it certainly caught our folks' attention in terms of the size and the scale," she said. "I suppose also we're so worried about the situation, it's one more sign that things aren't going well."

The isolated North has depended on outside support to feed its 24 million people since the 1990s. An estimated 1 million North Koreans starved to death after the Stalinist regime's state farm system collapsed after decades of mismanagement and the loss of subsidies from Moscow.

In Beijing on Tuesday, world aid agencies called for food assistance to North Korea to be stepped up despite a stalemate in talks to end its nuclear program, saying the communist regime still faces tremendous shortages affecting millions of people.

The WFP recently launched a new appeal for food donations, saying the supplies that let it feed 6.5 million North Koreans were dwindling and forcing it to cut off aid to children and the elderly. That followed a WFP request to governments for 500,000 tons of food for North Korea this year.

Of the $202 million that the agency appealed for this year, it has received about $72 million -- and practically all of it has been consumed, Miss Webb said.

"Unless something happens very soon, by the end of August, the only people we'll be feeding are 12,000 children in hospitals," she said.

(Excerpt) Read more at insider.washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: famine; farms; nkorea; northkorea
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To: agere_contra

Actually I've seen an argument that environmentalism has killed more people than communism--mostly excess malaria deaths due to the banning of DDT.

I suspect it's not true, as the person presenting it took the low-end estimates for communist murders (terror famines and mismanagment-induced famines included) in all cases except Cambodia.


21 posted on 06/02/2005 7:30:41 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (Christ is Risen! Christos Anesti! Khristos Voskrese! Al-Masih Qam! Hristos a Inviat!)
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To: prairiebreeze

Except that, they may well be coming back as hamburger...There have been many document incidents of cannabilism in the North during previous famines..


22 posted on 06/02/2005 7:31:10 AM PDT by ken5050 (Ann Coulter needs to have children ASAP to pass on her gene pool...any volunteers???)
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To: prairiebreeze

Starve or revolt their choice, not our problem.


23 posted on 06/02/2005 7:31:26 AM PDT by cynicom
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To: Tempestuous
Look at a map of North Korea. It is mostly mountains. The country had a division of labor when it was one country - the north provided power (hydroelectric e.g.) and raw materials (from mines e.g.), the south provided food. It is suicidal for such a tiny mountainous state to cut itself off from all foreign trade. But that is what their leaders did, focusing on "juche" - autarchy - largely for military reasons (a desire to be independent of foreign influences).

They could still feed themselves if they rewarded agricultural work - and fishing - sufficiently. That would mean higher pay for farmers than for urban government workers or soldiers. Instead, they have the typical extractive economy of the communist model, where a few cities try to live off the surplus produce of the countryside, as old nobilities lived off peasants. But nobilities were very small. Modern bureaucracies aren't, nor are mass armies (NK military mobilization is the highest in the world).

They can't pay the farmers very much while supporting all their party members and regime supporting soldiers. So they substitute force for consent, trying to get the extracted pay of the rest without commensurate reward to farmers. This works only in the shortest term. Because it makes everyone prefer a city life to a country one. The fields are deserted. Output plummets, because it is all going to those who do nothing to produce it, and producing it brings no reward. At first they can have soldiers order the peasants around more harshly, restrict their movements, make them live under goons with guns all day.

But that does not increase output. The goons eat and do not farm, and the farming proceeds in the worst possible conditions. Men try to run away, to China e.g. Or to the cities. They bribe everyone they can. If they have any family or connections in the cities, they use them to get out of the whole penal farming system. The regime responds first by sweeping up people in waves of arrests and sending them to labor camps - formal slave labor in place of regulated serfdom. The distinction between a prison camp and the countryside at large blurs, disappears.

Output keeps falling, the extractions do not stop, so peasants and prisoners starve to death. Those in the cities, or the guards, eat what food their is. Soon the prisoners are dead or escaped, the guards are doing the farming, badly, because there is no one else. But they can't. So they go to the cities and grab the party members, the lower ranking ones, who fed off the whole thing, and order them out to the fields to take the place of the peasants they have killed off or driven away. They can't pay them, so they order them under guard. Guess how productive city clerks will be as farmers.

So they beg for aid by proxy, to keep the whole thing afloat. Absent outside assistance, the whole system will crash into chaos in a few years at most.

24 posted on 06/02/2005 7:39:08 AM PDT by JasonC
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To: prairiebreeze
how would you suggest they take matters into their own hands against a well armed, well trained military

Google "Ceaucescu" for a possible solution.

25 posted on 06/02/2005 7:52:27 AM PDT by Uncle Fud
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To: JasonC

Nice summary.


26 posted on 06/02/2005 7:55:11 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: prairiebreeze
"I just wonder how realistic it is to expect sufficient numbers of citizens to band together and overthrow an entrenched regime."

It depends on the culture. It is absolutely necessary to recruit the armed forces, but since soldiers are people too, that is easy to do if the culture is a healthy, freedom loving one.

However if the culture is one of indifference to human suffering and lust for power, do we really want to save it? North Koreans hold the power to be any way they like. They can reject communism like the Russians did, or they can continue to embrace it and suffer the consequences.
27 posted on 06/02/2005 8:16:44 AM PDT by monday
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To: The_Reader_David

"Actually I've seen an argument that environmentalism has killed more people than communism--mostly excess malaria deaths due to the banning of DDT."

They have both killed millions. Which has killed more is just a technicality. Both are evil incarnate.


28 posted on 06/02/2005 8:19:30 AM PDT by monday
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To: Rutles4Ever

He never left. He simply joined the American Socialist Democratic Peoples Abortion Party. Formerly known as the Democratic Party.


29 posted on 06/02/2005 8:27:28 AM PDT by RetiredArmy (Two books, the Koran and Mein Kampf, advocate violence, murder and hate!)
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To: Joe Boucher

Ok sport. You work to feed these ingrates while they build up their war machine to kill you and our troops.

Oh but the poor bastards haven't got the means to fight back? Give me a break. Look what the hijackers used for weapons on 9-11.
If you are responsible for starving me and my family and countless killings, I gotta think even a rock or piece of wire can be used for a weapon.
But to just sit back and let yourself be starved?


30 posted on 06/02/2005 9:09:29 AM PDT by Joe Boucher (An enemy of Islam)
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To: JasonC
Simple. Stop obeying them. Die rather than submit, if they want to kill you.

Very easy to say from a well-fed, comfortable Western perspective.

The people in North Korea have been brainwashed for the last 50 years. They have no access to information from the outside world. The entire society is based around worship of the Dear Lader. The propaganda machine has convinced them that there is a worldwide famine and that N. Korea is actually better off than anywhere else. If you and your family had spent the last 50 years living in that society, you would not be fighting back, either.

So, to say that these people can be expected to rise up is completely unrealistic.

31 posted on 06/02/2005 9:37:00 AM PDT by Modernman ("Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. " -Bismarck)
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To: BroncosFan
I've often been tempted to do this with Ivy League faculty and residents of the Upper West Side.

Why would you want to inflict those people upon decent hard-working farmers?

32 posted on 06/02/2005 9:37:48 AM PDT by Modernman ("Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. " -Bismarck)
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To: Rutles4Ever

Sounds like the Khmer Rouge is back.


33 posted on 06/02/2005 9:38:27 AM PDT by dfwgator (Flush Newsweek!)
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To: cynicom
Starve or revolt their choice, not our problem.

When the N. Korean system reaches a point of near-collapse and decides to go out in a blaze of glory, it will very much be our problem.

34 posted on 06/02/2005 9:38:55 AM PDT by Modernman ("Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. " -Bismarck)
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To: prairiebreeze

Killing fields?


35 posted on 06/02/2005 9:39:06 AM PDT by jimfree (Freep and ye shall find.)
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To: jimfree

Perhaps Jack Nicholson could visit and advise them.


36 posted on 06/02/2005 9:44:38 AM PDT by SoothsayerToo
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To: prairiebreeze
Rumsfeld is going to geld Kim, so says Paul Harvey.

Caricature comical Kim as an infant on platform shoes.

37 posted on 06/02/2005 9:47:09 AM PDT by RightWhale (It comes down to lack of private property rights)
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To: prairiebreeze

Send in the Zimbabwaen agrarian team.


38 posted on 06/02/2005 9:48:31 AM PDT by BipolarBob (Yes I backed over the vampire, but I swear I didn't see it in my rearview mirror.)
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To: prairiebreeze

North Korea=A hungry and rabid dog in a cage-totally dependent upon those outside for survival and subsistance-the very same ones the ungrateful cur dreams of destroying.

Poor Kim.


39 posted on 06/02/2005 9:57:44 AM PDT by F.J. Mitchell (Sorry George, Hillary and Bill will give up their absolute power, only when it is pried from their)
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To: prairiebreeze
This is a toughie.

Send food, you potentially prop up the regime as malcontent is reduced.

Don't send food and world opinion has a field day.

40 posted on 06/02/2005 10:01:06 AM PDT by Chairman_December_19th_Society (James Burnham--Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.)
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