For North Koreans, the definition of success is when they get to eat an occasional egg, preferably with a bowl of rice, instead of the unappetising concoction of corn and weeds on which most of the population survives. Until recently, a sizeable segment of the North Korean population could afford the basic foodstuffs that are taken for granted elsewhere. Through their hard work and ingenuity, North Koreans pulled themselves out of the famine of the 1990s that killed 2 million people, almost 10 percent of the population. This wasn’t prosperity by any definition of the word, but it was at least survival.
North Korea today is in the throes of what can only be described as a great leap backwards, plunged into misery by the missteps of its 68-year-old leader, Kim Jong-il. A currency revaluation late last year, designed to restore the integrity of the socialist system, wiped out the savings of anybody with more than US$30 to their name, and caused the collapse of the markets where many bought their food and earned a meagre living. The North’s refusal to negotiate over its nuclear program and various provocations against South Korea, the biggest being the suspected torpedo attack that killed 46 sailors on a South Korean warship in March, has led to a sharp reduction in donations of food from South Korea and elsewhere.
An Amnesty International report on July 15 said that North Koreans lack not only food, but the most basic medical care. The report described hospitals that sounded more like torture chambers with major surgery performed without anaesthesia.
“Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from the pain,” a 24-year-old man, who had his leg amputated from the calf down after falling off of a train, told Amnesty’s researchers.
The statistics cited in the report were equally grim: North Korea’s spending on healthcare is less than US$1 per capita, among the lowest in the world. At least 5 percent of North Koreans have tuberculosis and 45 percent of children under five are stunted as a result of malnutrition.
Children and the elderly suffer from acute intestinal blockages from eating indigestible foods such as tree bark, roots and cobs. The poor diet also weakens the immune system, making people susceptible to disease.
“In view of the enormity of the food crisis in North Korea, health issues cannot be separated from the food insecurity that has gripped the country for almost two decades,” the report said.
Despite the perception of North Korea as the basketcase of Asia, the country once had an enviable healthcare system, with a network of nearly 45,000 family practitioners. Some 800 hospitals and 1,000 clinics were almost entirely free of charge for patients. They still are, but you don’t get much at the hospital these days. The doctors, who are barely paid, expect gifts from their patients. The hospitals often have no heating, running water or electricity. You need to provide your own food, blankets, bandages and medicine.
The school system that once allowed North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung (father of the current leader) to boast his country was the first in Asia to eliminate illiteracy has now collapsed. Students have no books, no paper, no pencils.
A 17-year-old girl from Musan, a border town, who I met earlier this year in China, said many of her friends had dropped out of school because they couldn’t afford the cash gifts they were expected to give their teachers.
North Koreans I’ve spoken to expressed despair that their country has been thrust into reverse, the scant progress made since the famine of the 1990s now unravelling. “Things had got better for us around 2004. We were getting by. Now it’s got hard again. My mother hasn’t eaten white rice in two years,” said a 28-year-old woman from Pyongsong, in the northern outskirts of Pyongyang.
She said people were already dying of starvation last October when she escaped from North Korea and that she’d heard conditions had deteriorated further after the currency revaluation. Her mother worked at one of the lowest level jobs in the market — as a porter, pushing one of the simple wooden carts used to transport merchandise for lack of motor vehicles. “Now she can’t even do that any more.”
A chatty 56-year-old woman, also from Musan, told me that her family had been surviving, until the currency reform wiped them out, by buying bottles of cooking oil to divide into small plastic bags to sell since most people couldn’t afford to buy more than a few grams. The woman, who left in mid-November, said her family feared another famine.
“It was terrible in the 1990s. If you walked around the streets, you would see bodies lying everywhere,” she said.
North Koreans heaped scorn on the currency reform, announced on Nov. 30. With less than 24 hours notice, all of the money in circulation was abolished and the markets closed. People were issued with a limited quantity of new money to buy subsidised food from state stores. The problem was that the state stores didn’t have enough food. People stampeded to get what little there was to buy. Some took their own lives and there were reports of rioting. Eventually the ruling Workers’ party backed down. They issued an apology, and to underscore their regret executed Pak Nam-ki, a 77-year-old party cadre who was blamed for bungling the economic policy. Although the markets have since been reopened, the episode left the regime badly damaged, economically and politically.
Kim Jong-il, who is in poor health, is trying to install his youngest son, Kim Jong-eun, as his successor. His confidence that he can do so might stem from his own succession after the death of his father in 1994. With North Korea’s economy in freefall and the Soviet Union having collapsed, Kim not only took power, but preserved North Korea’s political system, defying all predictions of the regime’s collapse. If the North Korean regime manages to do it again, it will be nothing short of a miracle.
“I don’t think it will be like the 1990s, when people died because they didn’t know any better,” said Lee, the woman from Musan. “People are complaining now. They know the general [Kim Jong-il] is doing a bad job.”
Barbara Demick’s book about North Korea, Nothing to Envy, won the 2010 Samuel Johnson prize this month.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under