North Korea does not just make the
headlines for missile and nuclear bomb tests, it is also well-known for
famines. Though there is plenty of money for military hardware, the hardline
Communist regime often struggles to feed its own people.
In such a secretive country, it is
hard to be sure which was its most disastrous famine, but there were fears that
one in the first decade of the 21st century may have killed up to
3.5 million people, with tens of thousands fleeing into China, and women being sold as
brides or forced into brothels and illegal sweatshops.
A decade earlier, in 1994,
defectors were reporting things had got so bad that old people were going out
into the fields to die so their families would not have to feed them. As floods
and drought struck in 1995-97, the government had to appeal for international
help while it appeared to be channelling what food there was to the army of one
million and party activists.
In 1998, a visiting research team
from the US State Congress estimated that at least 900,000 had died of
starvation over the previous 3 years, though it reckoned the real figure might
be as high as 2.4 million. Malnutrition was also widespread.
For more see A Disastrous History of the World. See also my posts of 22
September 2010, 26 May 2011 and 31 January 2016.
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