[LibKill]

This is the triumph of communism. Women selling their bodies for a half of a meal. Prostitution or starvation, that's what they have to chose from.

If I didn't have a really strong stomach I would be cleaning puke off of my keyboard.

[MarkL]

This is a terrific example of the old economic 101 study, "Guns or Butter." The simple fact is that North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, every industry is state controlled, they get a huge amount of foreign food aid (which I would be willing to bet, ALL goes to the military), and they are able to put all of their industry into their military programs. As long as those in power are comfy, who cares if millions of people are starving to death...

You know things must be bad when even 60 Minutes did a story about how bad things are in North Korea!

Mark

[Redcloak]

"...and in other news, former president Bill Clinton announced that he would be visiting North Korea. Clinton made the announcement while purchasing 3000 Big Macs from a McDonalds in Harlem."

[zarf]

Hungry Like The Wolf

Dark in the city night is a wire
Steam in the subway earth is afire
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
Woman you want me give me a sign
And catch my breathing even closer behind
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo

In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Smell like I sound I'm lost in a crowd.
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Straddle the line in discord and rhyme
I'm on the hunt I'm after you.
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And I'm hungry like the wolf

Stalked in the forest too close to hide
I'll be upon you by the moonlight side
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
High blood Drumming on your skin it's so tight
You feel my heat I'm just a moment behind
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo

In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Scent and a sound. I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf.
Strut on a line it's discord and rhyme
I howl and I whine I'm after you
Mouth is alive all running inside
And I'm hungry like the wolf.

Hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf
Hungry like the wolf

Burning the ground I break from the crowd
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
I smell like I sound. I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf
Strut on a line it's discord and rhyme
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
And I'm hungry like the wolf

[OahuBreeze]

We can be shocked in a thousand different ways, and Kim will make sure each one on our list is checked and add ten-thousand more. The real shocking and embarrassing thing is that the international community has allowed a cruel, inept, selfish totalitarian dictatorship, in the form of a father and son, to rule over North Korea for the past 50 some odd years. Why are we shocked? we all know what this lunatic wannabe is capable of after his armed raids, kidnappings, torture of his own citizens, assassination attempts, drug smuggling, indiscriminate weapons proliferations (what common goals does the communist "juche" kim regime share with the islamic republic of iran?) etc. He is a joke. Even Bin Laden, in some recesses of that hypocritical, grotesquely perverted mind of his probably actually thinks he's justified in his positions. Kim doesn't -- he knows he's a little tyrant, who thinks he and Dad are entitled to better privledges than the rest of humanity, and the death of millions is ok to ensure their continuted reign. Only in a precariously liberal international political arena could such an inept "power" get away with this....

[Gabrielle Reilly]

Boy they are lucky it is a trade. In much of Africa it is just gang rape by the rebels to girls as young as 10 and as old as 70 then left to die in the street for their families to cover their bodies.

It is all relative isn't it?

It can be such a cruel world. Hard to even imagine the screams, struggle, blood, heartbreak... the sound of a mothers wail resonating through her body as she buries her young daughter.

[Rudder]

Women trade sex for food in hungry Korea

By any other name, this ancient practice is known as either prostituion or marriage.

Why the headline?

[MonroeDNA]

Ah, the glories of communism.

It is sad, but well predicted.

Only the party members can afford to pay.

The rest of the country is starving, and malnourished.

Stalin did it on purpose. NK is doing it because that is the end result of a failed political idea.

Add some more numbers to "The Black Book of Communism."

[SevenDaysInMay]

P-rations are as old as woman with man itself.

[krb]

Women trade sex for food

I thought that's what marriage was... < rim shot > :-)

[krb]

Reminds me of this funny Onion article:

AKRON, OH—Area resident Helen Crandall, 44, was arrested by Akron police Sunday, charged with conducting an elaborate "sex-for-security" scam in which she allegedly defrauded husband Russell Crandall out of nearly $230,000 in cash, food, clothing and housing over the past 19 years using periodic offers of sexual intercourse.

	Above: A 1993 photo of alleged "sex-for-security" scam artist Helen Crandall. Police suspect the groceries she is holding were paid for by her victim, husband David Crandall (right).

"It's the biggest scam of its kind I've ever seen," Akron police chief Thomas Agee said. "We're talking coats, dishwashers, jewelry, sewing machines, bathroom cleansers—you name it."

According to Agee, undercover agents spotted Crandall's husband handing her $50 in cash at approximately 4 p.m., just 30 minutes after the two had sex. Crandall then drove off in her car, returning home two hours later with five bags of groceries.

"That's when we made the arrest," Agee said. "After tracking her for years, we finally had proof that she was buying all those goods with dirty money."

During the arrest, Akron police officials entered the Crandall household and seized more than 150 items Mrs. Crandall had received from her husband over the last 19 years, including a four-speed adjustable food processor, 12 pairs of earrings, a matching sofa and loveseat, a box of two-ply kitchen garbage bags, and a portable radio.

In exchange for these items, Agee said, Crandall's husband received sex an estimated 950 times—most frequently in the master bedroom, but also in the downstairs den three times, and once on the floor of the sewing room.

In addition to physical evidence, Akron police have collected considerable eyewitness testimony. More than 250 Akron residents have come forward to report seeing Helen and Russell Crandall together, and several said they witnessed Mr. Crandall flagrantly purchasing items for his wife.

"Sure, they'd come in here," said Ray Greene of Greene's House and Home. "I think the last time they got one of those box fans with the three settings."

Perhaps the most damaging testimony has come from Mr. Crandall himself, who on Tuesday told police that while the couple was dating in 1977, Mrs. Crandall—then known as Helen Steuben—demanded that he buy her a ring worth over $1,000 before he could have sex with her. The first sexual liaison took place some six months later at Bob's Honeymooner Hotel during an all-expenses-paid trip to Niagara Falls.

It was also in 1977, Mr. Crandall said, that his wife quit her job at Shippee Shoes in downtown Akron.

"Clearly," Summit County prosecutor Andrew Dravecky said, "after quitting her job, the accused began receiving money under the table from some other source: How else could she have afforded to not work? It's now pretty apparent that at that point she began supporting herself by providing a certain service to Mr. Crandall."

Crandall's mother, Bernice Steuben, a resident of the Valley View Senior Home in Yuma, AZ, is being sought for questioning in connection to the case: Police suspect that Steuben may have introduced her daughter to the sex-for-security scam after having used it herself from 1932 to 1971.

But for all the evidence collected against Crandall, Dravecky said the case will likely be difficult to prosecute. "Helen was very careful to cover her tracks," he said. "She even got her husband to put her name on the bank accounts and credit cards."

The Crandall case is not an isolated incident, said criminologist John Ohlmeyer, who said there are "literally millions" of such cases across the U.S. each year that never come to court.

"This kind of thing isn't as uncommon as we'd all like to think," Ohlmeyer said. "A woman finds herself in a situation where she isn't employable. Or maybe she has interests like child-rearing, cooking and home-maintenance that keep her from getting a job. So what does she do? She cooks up a scheme to entrap a man using her body as the bait. It's frightening, but it happens every day in this country."

[The Pheonix]

I remember reading International News Agencies news despatches in 2001, that starving N.Koreans living at the China borders routinely sneak across at nite to steal whatever food they can from Chinese farms, usually animal feeds from the stores

And the Chinese farmers, out of the kindness of their hearts and on humanitarian ground,,although they knew about these thefts, just pretend it didn't happen, and allowed it to go on,

[alrea]

overtly lure older men who enjoy party privileges and access to food, the travellers said

Ah, the benefits of being a fat old bureaucrat; nothing like "interns" and access to food. Government worker for life is what we all should aspire to.

[Nick Danger]

Forty notes, most of them concerning the indignity of these young women having to choose between starvation and prostitution.

What victims they are. The poor dears.

Hello? What's happening to everybody else over there? The men? The ugly women? The not-so-young women? Children? They are starving to death.

So who are we directed to feel sorry for? The only people who can find a way to get any food in that damned place.