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Fake meat and free markets ease North Koreans’ hunger
Reuters ^ | November 3, 2017 | By James Pearson and Seung-Woo Yeom

Posted on 11/03/2017 8:01:23 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

Take the dregs left from making soy bean oil, which usually go to feed the pigs. Press and roll them into a sandy-coloured paste. Stuff with rice, and top with chilli sauce. The dish’s name, injogogi, means “man-made meat.”

In North Korea for years it was a recipe for survival. Today it is a popular street food, traded alongside other goods and services on informal markets, known as jangmadang. Defectors say there are hundreds of these markets. The creation and informal trade of injogogi and other foods offers a window into a barter economy that has kept North Korea afloat despite years of isolation, abuse and sanctions.

“Back in the day, people had injogogi to fill themselves up as a substitute for meat,” said Cho Ui-sung, a North Korean who defected to the South in 2014. “Now people eat it for its taste.”

North Korea was set up with backing from the Soviet Union as a socialist state. The Soviet collapse in 1991 crippled the North Korean economy and brought down its centralised food distribution system. As many as three million people died. Those who survived were forced to forage, barter and invent meals from whatever they found.

But the prevalence of informal markets also makes it hard to understand the exact state of the North Korean economy. And this makes it hard to measure how badly sanctions, which do not apply to North Korean food imports, are hurting ordinary people.

Pyongyang has said the curbs threaten the survival of its children. Defectors say a poor corn harvest this year has made it hard for people in rural areas to feed themselves. The agencies who want to help find all this hard to measure.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: communism

1 posted on 11/03/2017 8:01:23 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Reuters loves their brutal dictatorships.


2 posted on 11/03/2017 8:03:32 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

College professors across the nation will use this to ‘prove’ that Communism works.


3 posted on 11/03/2017 8:04:52 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

I can just hear America’s left reply - the North Koreans and their single-payer health-care system are far better than the USA in controlling diabetes and heart disease....


4 posted on 11/03/2017 8:06:38 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Yummy!


5 posted on 11/03/2017 8:09:49 AM PDT by InterceptPoint (Ted, you finally endorsed. About time)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

As a side note to this food problem, there ate no rats, cats, or dogs in North Korea - some sort of aversion by the animals or ...?


6 posted on 11/03/2017 8:10:00 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: BenLurkin

Reminds me of something I saw on the internet not long ago...

What is the difference between Nazism and Communism?

No one says real Nazism has never been tried.


7 posted on 11/03/2017 8:11:05 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: InterceptPoint

Coming soon to US vegetarian and vegan eateries everywhere!

And we have, for years, been warned about over processed foods!


8 posted on 11/03/2017 8:12:37 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Oldeconomybuyer; Army Air Corps

So they are feeding them Taco Bell?


9 posted on 11/03/2017 8:14:21 AM PDT by KC_Lion (If you want on First Lady Melania's, Ivanka Trump's or Sarah Palin's Ping Lists, just let me know.)
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To: InterceptPoint

Barfgogi


10 posted on 11/03/2017 8:17:19 AM PDT by BykrBayb (Lung cancer free since 11/9/07. Colon cancer free since 7/7/15. Obama free since 1/20/17. PTL ~ Þ)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Send all the campus snowflakes over there to see how wonderful Commy ism is and threaten to cancel their passports for return. Maybe then they’d appreciate what they have instead of gripe about it, as trained to do by libtard “educators”.


11 posted on 11/03/2017 8:18:29 AM PDT by EinNYC
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To: KC_Lion

Nah, no mention of anyone suffering chronic flatulence...or worse.


12 posted on 11/03/2017 8:18:57 AM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: InterceptPoint

Just looking at it makes me presume the food is as salty as beef jerky. Better than having to eat the bark off of trees, I guess.


13 posted on 11/03/2017 8:22:30 AM PDT by lee martell
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To: lee martell

The perfect liberal “solution” to Global Warming? Perhaps.


14 posted on 11/03/2017 8:45:48 AM PDT by FiddlePig (Who needs Truth & facts when you have narrative?)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Basically cellulose pressed into a paste and cooked.

In other words, sawdust.


15 posted on 11/03/2017 9:22:37 AM PDT by lurk
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To: lurk
"Basically cellulose pressed into a paste and cooked.

In other words, sawdust."


"It's from the finest lumber our mills can supply." - Hynkel, The Great Dictator (1940)
16 posted on 11/03/2017 5:22:47 PM PDT by clearcarbon
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