North Korean famines

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 21^st 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.

Ghost boats of the Sea of Japan

At regular intervals, ghost ships, or more precisely ghost boats about 30 feet long appear in the Sea of Japan. Last November alone, 13 were found drifting, deserted except for dead bodies – a total of 26, many of them already largely decomposed.

There are indications that they are from North Korea – a handwritten sign in one saying it belonged to a unit of the North Korean army, the tattered remains of a national flag, the boats’ dilapidated condition and the lack of equipment.

Were they carrying defectors? Apparently some of those who escaped the closed, repressive regime in the past arrived in such vessels. Or were they fishermen under pressure from their fanatical Communist government to get bigger catches, who strayed too far out to sea?

The last explanation would fit with the regime’s desperation to conceal the scale of North Korea’s dreadful food shortage. In spite of aid from abroad, there has been little improvement in production since the mass starvation of the early 2000s.

*For more on North Korea's famines, see A Disastrous History of the World.