North Korea's desperate plea for food goes unanswered
John Sparks observes Pyongyang’s propaganda machine fail to mask a country in the midst of abject famine.
The main evening broadcast on North Korea state television is put out every night at 9pm. It must be quite a challenge to come up with 30 minutes of content.
Reporting the news is not option in this socialist paradise so the ‘journalists’ at ‘Korean Central Television’ have got to get creative and make it up. I was particularly interested in a story last week about a new international ranking that rated countries with the best ‘quality of life’. The winner of KCTV’s extensive survey, boomed the gravel-toned female newsreader, was China, with North Korea coming in second and the United States finishing last.
Note the attempt to infuse a touch of credibility into the process by placing North Korea second. Perhaps the program’s propagandists envisaged the stifled laughter in living rooms across the country if they’d picked themselves winners.
The tragic reality in North Korea is that there is no shortage of material to report on.
The country is now in now in a desperate state, experiencing the worst food shortages since famine in the 1990s (when more than three million probably lost their lives).
After a bitterly cold winter and widespread flooding, people in North Korea are starving to death. The situation has been made more desperate with the United States and South Korea refusing to send food aid to the north – this decision was made after series of provocations by Kim Jong Il and his generals which included the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel.
Channel 4 News has learnt that North Korea put out an unprecedented plea for emergency food aid through their embassies in January. However, the UN’s World Food Program says no country, including China, has come back to them with an offer of assistance.
Inside North Korea, the situation is deteriorating. Food is allocated according to a public distribution system – the state decides what individuals receive. In May, each North Korean was allocated 190 grams of food per day – about 25 per cent of the 2300 calories a normal, healthy human being needs in a northern climate like North Korea. In the first two weeks of June, the allocation dropped to 150 grams. In the second half of June, the North Korean government has admitted that it has nothing – 0 grams – to give people.
(There is no guarantee that North Korean citizens actually receive such allocations when food is available. It is widely believed that rations are siphoned off to the military and other organs of the state – or held in reserve for special occasions. The WFP manages to run a surprisingly robust monitoring system – there are few restrictions on where its monitors can travel – but officials admit they may only see ‘the best of the worst’ in North Korea).
The aid situation is wrapped up in serious international politics. Potential donor countries are waiting for the US to take a lead. It sent over a diplomatic team to Pyongyang a few weeks ago to examine the humanitarian situation but international aid agencies haven’t heard anything from the Americans since their trip.
The US, the UK and others will worry that a new batch of assistance to a brutish, nuclear-armed dictatorship will serve only to sustain King Jong II and co for a few more years. But the ‘Dear Leader’ will probably survive anyway. The level of repression is so severe, no organised resistance is likely to take root (see Barbara Demick’s book ‘Nothing to Envy’). North Koreans will simple eat grass and straw (if they can get it) and starve in the meantime.
No doubt, we will witness another ‘quality of life’ ranking next year. I expect the news-team at KCTV to construct another nail-biting finish between North Korea and China. I just hope they’ve got enough to eat while they’re at it.