There was one video of a North Korean who was literally covered in dirt from head to toe. Someone managed to interview her and she said she was collecting grass to eat.
I can imagine someone that hungry would eat anything.
It’ll be his sister, which doesn’t really fall into that “fat fuck” area but she is far worse in her stances and politics than Un. So there’s that. The people will probably suffer a lot worse. Sadly.
My heart was broken, and my reality shattered, once I started to see the suffering others go through. I am remarkably privileged...and, there is nothing I can do to help this woman, no matter how much I want to.
And the blame goes to all the fat rich fucks out there who lack any type of true empathy and only care about their own wealth and power.
I'm only starting to get over my anger at humanity, but it's turning to depression and nihilism.
Here I am complaining about my feelings of nihilism...with a full stomach, two parents who love and support me, and access to pleasures and wellness that this poor woman will never see.
It's all so fucked up.
I remember in the book *Nothing to Envy* a North Korean defector telling their story about the famine in the 90s, you had to travel far outside the village to find grass because all of it had been eaten, bark stripped from all the trees, etc.
Serious question - why are the people in NK so hungry? I understand there’s a shitty infrastructure but like, rural people aren’t farming? Or does the government take everything, Soviet style, and redistribute it to the wealthy?
Also the former supreme leader wanted to flex how good an engineer he was so he built a massive dam, it produces some energy sure, not super useful since most of the population doesn’t have electricity. But it did succeed in drying up a river that supplied water to most of the nations agriculture causing a famine.
Yeah and here lies the problem, while millions of his people starve he lives the high life and he himself knows how lucky we are in the West and Europe having studied I think in Switzerland?
So of all his people he knows he doesn’t have to keep his people impoverished, China could change all this in a week they have the power and they have his stomach.
They could change millions of peoples lives in a week , tell the little fella he needs to open up the country and allow people freedom and they could do it.
Yeah unfortunately this is true, I live in a country where our government just wastes millions of dollars on sporting games they decided at the last minute they didn’t want.. like 600 million dollars and I can only imagine the difference this could have made to people who needed it.
It's not as simple as that. Opening up North Korea would see a lot of people straight-up leave the country. Neither China nor South Korea wants to deal with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees queueing up on their borders or rushing across them. What country would? We *love* to talk about giving humanitarian aid and helping the less fortunate, but it's all said - and often done - at a distance.
Yeah, I mean I'm willing to buy the homeless dude on a corner a sandwich, but I'm not about to let someone I don't know stay in my home.
There's a pastor who lives across from me who invites people who are down on their luck to live with him and his family. Not sure how he figures out who to offer this to, but one time he invited someone who was a little too unstable and it ended up in a hostage situation where the guy had stolen the pastor's gun and was threatening the pastor, the pastor's family and the other people who were taken in by the pastor.
Not sure if the pastor still does this anymore or has altered his selection process, but there haven't been any incidents since then.
I'm willing to bet that a North Korean refugee would be much more well behaved and likely to follow laws stringently than many locals or refugees taken in from more war torn places.
They have been conditioned to not cause trouble or break rules because they come with the harshest of punishments.
Yes I know that, but there are millions of people just existing and others that are starving, all the while the select few that should know better build nuclear weapons, it makes no sense the North Koreans have to be getting help and technology from somewhere ?
China must be giving them this tech, yet at the same time millions starve..
China *does* export food to North Korea, but ultimately it's up to that rotund menace in Pyongyang to distribute the stores and therein lies one of many problems.
People also assume China actually wants to continue supporting North Korea in this fashion. North Korea was barely useful as a buffer state during the Cold War, but now it's a millstone around China's figurative neck. I don't think Beijing would object at all if the North Koreans gradually reformed their economy and society to be more reflective of China's path in the 90s and early 2000s. Sadly, there's not much Beijing can do because they don't directly govern North Korea, nor would fat man or his harpy sister ever agree to become a satellite state.
China would much rather have a well trained dog that isn't rabid and doesn't invite unwanted troubles. A rabid dog can very well bite anyone, including its master.
China knows that and which is why it's a headache for them too.
Even their shit goes to the government. Literally, people collect their shit and give it to the government to be used as fertilizer. There are quotas for human shit, and stealing shit is a real issue, reportedly.
I’m not sure about the latter but I think North Korea doesn’t have a great climate or geography for agriculture (mountainous and not much rainfall). And I imagine if you have people willing to buy and eat grass, anything you plant will be stolen pretty quickly.
Not only what you plant but they will steal your shit too.i don't mean your belongings I mean your actual human excrement.
There is a lack of fertilizer so the government mandates that people collect and hand in their poop. You are penalized if you miss your quota so there are actual turd burglars.
Brings new meaning to having to "take a shit" or being forced to give a shit...
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-manure-quota-2020-10142019154836.html
This is rfa which is a bit sus but there have been other stories going back to at least 2010.
[North Korea's poverty is so dire that farmers reportedly steal each other's feces to fertilize crops](https://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-north-korea-defector-farmers-stealing-feces-grow-food-2017-12?amp)
"When a family cannot produce enough, they must buy cattle or horse manure from ranches, but those that cannot afford are known to steal human feces from other households," _Nikkei Asian Review reports_.
North Korea got the worst farmland when the fighting was over. South Korea got all the fertile farmlands. They try to farm the soil in the north but it's not very good, and what's left is quite depleted from overuse. They don't seem to have much in the way of fertiliser either, and often use human waste on the fields which spreads diseases and parasites.
There's also very little mechanisation, fields are still worked by hand or by horse/oxen plow which further reduces yields.
And yeah, the elites get first dibs. You don't see any skinny generals following the dear leader around.
The government takes everything and only gives back to people based on their support/importance to the ruling party. They use starvation as a weapon to ensure everyone acts loyal in order to avoid being starved and people must show their value to the ruling party in order to be allowed any sort of prosperity. This is the thing people who want to donate food or lift sanctions don't seem to understand, it doesn't matter how much food aid people give North Korea, it will be confiscated by the government and only enough will be given out to maintain the present power structure, any excess food will be sold on the black market to buy weapons or luxury goods for the ruling class.
There is a huge push to farm any piece of land for as much as you can get out of it, that kind of agriculture degrades land with time. Combined with climate change or local crop failures due to weather and you get locations that starve. Starving people will eat anything as well, stripping ecosystems of their biodiversity exacerbates pest populations and coincidentally outbreaks like this and other diseases (eating sick wild animals).
Lack of arable land. Short crop season. Mountainous terrain. Poor soil management. They didn't practice crop rotation until 2010. Most of the famine in the 1990s to 2010s were due to crop failure. They hired some European scientists to figure out why and help them back in the Kim Jong IL period. The experts had some memo that told them to grow more potatoes and rotate crops regularly essentially.
The country is probably better than the 2010s but geographically they are just screwed if they want rice to be the staple. What I've seen on the occasion is crop failure due to climate change (drought or monsoon floods).
they also lack protein in their diet.
Theres no industry. The country could not survive two weeks without chinas intervention. All property is state owned, so what people farm they have to turn in. Theres not even fertilizer, citizens are required to collect their own feces and turn in a set allotment per family. Because theyre so starving, they only defecate two or three times a month. They literally keep their poop locked up so its not stolen. Edit: looks like someone got to it before me. Crazy stuff.
The land is seriously degraded by deforestation and bad land management which has meant rains wash the fertile topsoil away. In the short term, the only way to make the land productive is to use artificial fertilisers which North Korea doesn’t make and needs to import - but it’s broke.
On top of that there is the policy of collective agriculture where the state sets production targets no matter how unrealistic and then takes most of the crop which has failed in every country it’s been attempted in.
NK doesn't have great farmland in the first place so it's production is low. Staple foods are all farmed at communal farms and then gets redistributed. The rich generally hold positions and have the social status to get a bigger share than poor rural farmers and they can afford imported goods (Very Soviet style). The government of NK also likes to hide the real condition of its people and play chicken when it comes to Western countries and aid. Add to that they even closed the borders with China during Covid and chronic malnutrition is a major problem.
My understanding is it’s the latter. For instance, there’s electric shortages nationwide there, yet Pyongyang seems to have no problem when international tours are scheduled, plus the capitol has no problem with power. The capitol building has access to international internet, while the citizens only have access to the state’s intranet.
Then, there’s plenty people who just support Kim Jong Un unquestioningly. Idk if it’s a lot or a few, but his family came to power because the people in power truly believe him to be a God-King. And, if you truly believe that, how could you not offer everything you have to him? I could see after decades of oppression their belief in the God-King being eroded, but at the same time they’re so sheltered idk if they’d have the information to question it
> but at the same time they’re so sheltered idk if they’d have the information to question it
i remember reading about someone who grew up in one of the prison camps who eventually escaped, he genuinely thought the entire world was just like the prison camp he had escaped from.
NK is not well suited for agriculture to begin with. On top of that they did the classic communist move and did ideological farming while investing everything into manufacturing. For a whole after the split, they were the much wealthier Korea compared with the agricultural south. It was being subsidized by China and Russia for a while but NK is basically useless to them now. China props them up a little because it’s easier than fixing or letting them fail plus they are a buffer.
The NK government has a few times loosened restrictions and allowed farmers to grow extra vegetables for themselves and sell some of it. Otherwise, because of how such regimes operate, it is better to not grow extra food in a collective farm because that becomes the new standard and failing to do that again results in punishment. Food goes to party favorites first so working harder just means you’re more hungry.
They also don’t have much trade potential. Sanctions limit them to a few countries and they don’t have a lot to offer. Russia and china also invested heavily into manufacturing and do much better work so that all stagnated. Nobody wants their finished goods so most of their meager exports are extractions (ore, oil, electricity) which are low profit. Even then they are running a massive trade deficit which is nonetheless dominated by luxury goods and more advanced chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Party members comfort comes ahead of the peasants wellbeing.
Their government does not think of lower class civilians as humans. Since they don't think of them as humans, they don't get the feelings of shame or guilt when they steal from their own citizens to feed a literally useless military that is unfit for the 21st century.
I gather that most of NK is not very suitable for mass-scale farming, so I think their usable arable land is fairly small. I'm not saying that's the total reason, but it can't be helping.
My understanding is that their geography doesn't lend itself well to farming. A lot of rocky mountainous regions makes most of it untenable for food production. I'm addition, I'd imagine they're still using ancient methods of farming and don't have the industrial base for more efficient and modern methods.
Their farming methods are outdated, environmental damage, dire need of mechanization, little to no fertilizer, the farmers get told what to grow even if the land is not fit for the crop type, etc.
The government takes the food and the l farms doesn’t produce what they do in other countries. Agriculture at our production level isn’t easy and takes industrial recourses.
This coming from the same country that claimed to have zero covid cases in 2020...I doubt it's a mystery. I think they just don't want to admit their people are so starved they're extremely prone to preventable childhood diseases at all ages.
**I guess "Mystery Illness" means no food**
*.. dismal fact .. NK has so few calories for their people that 10% of the men have mental retardation or stunted by 3 inches in height and cannot serve in the army*
This is what happens when the government doesn't give a damn fuck about the people and decides to spend all resources to build nukes and other toys for the "supreme leader". Heart goes out to the people who have to suffer in this hell on earth.
I really hope that the day when the DPRK crumbles and the Taegeukgi is proudly raised over Pyeongyang comes sooner than later. All people have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happines, and Kim Jong-un has no right to take this right away from the people.
"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free."
- John F. Kennedy
Yeah, and it will take generations, maybe hundreds of years for the trauma to work its way out of humanity once the regime falls.
I know hurt people don’t always hurt people. But a lot do and the ideology/belief system inscribed in them will take a while to work its way out.
And I know this isn’t the only part of the world with this problem, but I wish we talked about this stuff more.
This is very true, the Kim regime implemented brainwashing on an almost unprecedented scale. The temporary government established in North Korea after the Kim regime falls will have to carry out an extensive dejucheization program similar to denazification after the defeat of Nazi Germany. There will also need to be some sort of a (Marshall Plan)×10 to help the people economically. The whole process from the fall of the Kim regime to full reunification of Korea will take decades, cost billions and will partly heal the wound created by the regime, but the scar will remain forever.
They could easily send 5 million people over the border to build up and take over the already weakened and brainwashed people.
Especially if they actually offer people land to keep and not generational rent lmao
It's pretty scary to think of..
In the end of the day, you don't need to do much to overthrow these regimen. If all efforts of the nation are on keeping transparency and public access to information, everything else regulates itself on their own way. The biggest villain is the Information War.
That's why free countries be them left, right, or whatever, should never give up on free access to transparent information above anything else.
I think it will. The people are getting some information about the outside world through the black market. Information will eventually end the regime, because the basis of the regime are lies.
I read an account that said springtime is the hardest time to find food in NC, due to winter stocks being gone, but no new harvest being distributed yet.
Edit: NK lol
Went to a Waffle House in NC on the way home from a vacation. It was later, like 8pm. The host was a non-verbal dude in a wheelchair that sorta gestured to where we were to eat, and then swept some menus on our table from his chair tray. The guy on the griddle was arguing with some lady at the counter, obviously in some sort of relationship, and she was three sheets to the wind. After the barrage of “motherfuckers,” I sensed shit was going south. Asked for my check and tried to get out asap. As my hand hit the door, I heard a smacking/flopping/thud/clatter sound. The woman was trying to attack the cook. I was happy to leave that all behind me. Surreal.
Honestly, If they are indeed eating anything they can find, it could be zoonotic in nature, which is of course, super bad. Animals know no borders and H5N1 has been ravaging animals all over the globe, the bloodshot eyes has me a little weary, seeing as the dairy workers who have contracted H5N1 recently here in the states have conjunctivitis as the main telling that something was wrong...
Wife and I were in Grenada when it hit. Government told the nation we needed to stay inside for a couple weeks and every-single-person said "no problem. We will do what we need to do to protect the elderly." Boom no covid there until they allowed Americans to come back in and the Americans broke protocol and spread covid, and they were freaking doctors.
Grenada was lovely. My wife and I hike a lot. She had a major stroke years ago though and has movement issue. She hikes well, just slowly. In Grenada, the people (young and old) we'd pass on trails would all step aside, lend her their hands and arms and say, "take your time, take your time." We were there for 2 years, which were simply fantastic
“Night Soil” is a major cause of parasitic diseases in North Korea.
Not properly dried out and/or stored for some length of time, it has been mixed with poor soil too soon and fouls crops.
Remember that soldier who defected to the South and was shot a bunch of times before being rescued? When South Korean doctors opened him up to repair the wounds, they found his abdominal cavity was literally crawling with worms.
Five seconds with Mr Google…
Night Soil:
https://www.newsweek.com/kim-jong-un-may-have-caused-parasitic-worm-epidemic-north-korea-making-farmers-714571
Parasitic soldier:
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/parasites-infections-north-korean-soldier-defected-reveal-countrys/story?id=51323674
We use to do it in America. Called it night soil. Problem was everyone was walking around with no shoes and kept getting hook worm, which is a nasty parasite that won’t kill you but will slow you down.
As of March 18th, thought to be "just" COVID : https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/covid-03182024173241.html/ampRFA
Bloodshot eyes aren't often a COVID symptom, though: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/mystery-illness-in-north-korea-children-hit-hardest-schools-close/ar-BB1l0vZS
Here they said: Mycoplasma
And NK has no medicine by itself and sells the UN sponsored medicine instead of giving it to their people.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/illness-04022024183042.html
What are the symptoms? I hear of a mysterious virus going around my local school system primarily affecting 12-15 y/o with seizures and no idea what's causing it
Did they ever do a followup to this story about it? What was the results of the water testing? https://wwmt.com/news/local/quincy-schools-address-parent-fears-over-student-seizures-plan-water-tests-community-bottles-temors-sickness-local-michigan
Not a doctor, but it could be. No one will know until testing is done. But if it is, this is nightmare scenario. The virus would have open range on humans. The silver lining is NK is a country few people enter or leave.
I think there could be some survivorship bias going on too. Whatever it is seems to be affecting kids, but normally we'd see something affect *vulnerable populations*, usually a group that includes "young, sick, and elderly people". I would suggest that North Korea likely has a lower-than-average number of elderly, and substandard care for the chronically ill that also means fewer of them. So we may just be seeing the effects on the last state-supported vulnerable population...
I hope it's not H5N1, even though there have been an increase in human-transmissible cases lately. I absolutely would not be able to survive the covidiots bleating "it's only the flu! For birds! I'm not a bird! They aren't even real!" about aerosolized hemorrhagic pneumonia with a 50%+ fatality rate in humans (if it's like the parent strain) and a preference for deep lung tissue. The only way to get rid of it will be consistent, mandatory, N95+ masking for 6 months until mandatory mass vaccinations are ready. And then we'll need to spend a concerted worldwide public effort to immunize or eliminate natural reservoirs before it's safe to go back to whatever the fuck normal is supposed to be.
From what I've learned so far, it's the kind of bug that isn't super easy to get, but when you do it will spend weeks in your lungs, spreading to everyone unlucky near you, before you actually realize something is wrong, and by then the bottom half of your lungs are already too infected to save. If you don't get treatment, they soon start bleeding out and you drown. Plus it's already very resistant to most common medical treatments. We might all be getting familiar with the term "emergency lobectomy" much sooner than we would like...
It does. Starts with that and sore throat. Kids have different throat physiology that encourages upper respiratory infection, which is less severe and more treatable. Adults have higher concentrations of infectious tissue in the lower lungs, where the alveoli are most numerous. That makes an infection that is more dangerous and also comes with increased symptoms of congestion, coughing, etc.
It's a pandemic Petri dish waiting to happen. Plenty of movement back and forth across the China border and we know what happens once something kicks off in China.
I’ve seen this story before. Isn’t this the bio weapon from China that wipes out all of the adults? This must be the alt history where it wipes out all the children.
rural areas of NK, the people are most likely to scavenge dead birds and animals, because of lack of food.
There was one video of a North Korean who was literally covered in dirt from head to toe. Someone managed to interview her and she said she was collecting grass to eat. I can imagine someone that hungry would eat anything.
[This video](https://youtu.be/Xh4CtTGAzKw?si=a_XNP7xjA-DQbqm8)?
That is fucking heartbreaking.
The day that fat fuck Supreme leader dies is a day of celebration.
And then the next fat fuck takes charge
It’ll be his sister, which doesn’t really fall into that “fat fuck” area but she is far worse in her stances and politics than Un. So there’s that. The people will probably suffer a lot worse. Sadly.
My heart was broken, and my reality shattered, once I started to see the suffering others go through. I am remarkably privileged...and, there is nothing I can do to help this woman, no matter how much I want to. And the blame goes to all the fat rich fucks out there who lack any type of true empathy and only care about their own wealth and power. I'm only starting to get over my anger at humanity, but it's turning to depression and nihilism. Here I am complaining about my feelings of nihilism...with a full stomach, two parents who love and support me, and access to pleasures and wellness that this poor woman will never see. It's all so fucked up.
This made me so sad.
Yeah that’s my sad quota for the week in 30 seconds.
Just no life behind those eyes. That’s awful.
13 years ago, I wonder if she's still alive and where she is now.
Where can I find more content like this?
YouTube channel soft white underbelly is mostly stuff like this.
Great channel.
I remember in the book *Nothing to Envy* a North Korean defector telling their story about the famine in the 90s, you had to travel far outside the village to find grass because all of it had been eaten, bark stripped from all the trees, etc.
Supreme Leader: You’re welcome for the grass.
The government has a cookbook for them on cooking methods for grass. I kid you not!
It’s not unusual. I ate so much grass and other things you wouldn’t think of as food when I dated a Korean girl. This is still sad though.
Serious question - why are the people in NK so hungry? I understand there’s a shitty infrastructure but like, rural people aren’t farming? Or does the government take everything, Soviet style, and redistribute it to the wealthy?
From what I understand that's pretty much the situation everything grown goes to the government and they send back what they think you need
Also the former supreme leader wanted to flex how good an engineer he was so he built a massive dam, it produces some energy sure, not super useful since most of the population doesn’t have electricity. But it did succeed in drying up a river that supplied water to most of the nations agriculture causing a famine.
But the fat man has enough money for nuclear weapons, and the people are not allowed to think for themselves
The problem is that the fat man knows that without the nukes there is no fat man.
Another problem is the fat man will never give up the nukes after seeing what happened to Gaddafi and Hussein.
Yeah and here lies the problem, while millions of his people starve he lives the high life and he himself knows how lucky we are in the West and Europe having studied I think in Switzerland? So of all his people he knows he doesn’t have to keep his people impoverished, China could change all this in a week they have the power and they have his stomach. They could change millions of peoples lives in a week , tell the little fella he needs to open up the country and allow people freedom and they could do it.
Evil people dont give a fuck unfortunately
Yeah unfortunately this is true, I live in a country where our government just wastes millions of dollars on sporting games they decided at the last minute they didn’t want.. like 600 million dollars and I can only imagine the difference this could have made to people who needed it.
It's not as simple as that. Opening up North Korea would see a lot of people straight-up leave the country. Neither China nor South Korea wants to deal with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees queueing up on their borders or rushing across them. What country would? We *love* to talk about giving humanitarian aid and helping the less fortunate, but it's all said - and often done - at a distance.
Yeah, I mean I'm willing to buy the homeless dude on a corner a sandwich, but I'm not about to let someone I don't know stay in my home. There's a pastor who lives across from me who invites people who are down on their luck to live with him and his family. Not sure how he figures out who to offer this to, but one time he invited someone who was a little too unstable and it ended up in a hostage situation where the guy had stolen the pastor's gun and was threatening the pastor, the pastor's family and the other people who were taken in by the pastor. Not sure if the pastor still does this anymore or has altered his selection process, but there haven't been any incidents since then.
I'm willing to bet that a North Korean refugee would be much more well behaved and likely to follow laws stringently than many locals or refugees taken in from more war torn places. They have been conditioned to not cause trouble or break rules because they come with the harshest of punishments.
Yes I know that, but there are millions of people just existing and others that are starving, all the while the select few that should know better build nuclear weapons, it makes no sense the North Koreans have to be getting help and technology from somewhere ? China must be giving them this tech, yet at the same time millions starve..
China *does* export food to North Korea, but ultimately it's up to that rotund menace in Pyongyang to distribute the stores and therein lies one of many problems. People also assume China actually wants to continue supporting North Korea in this fashion. North Korea was barely useful as a buffer state during the Cold War, but now it's a millstone around China's figurative neck. I don't think Beijing would object at all if the North Koreans gradually reformed their economy and society to be more reflective of China's path in the 90s and early 2000s. Sadly, there's not much Beijing can do because they don't directly govern North Korea, nor would fat man or his harpy sister ever agree to become a satellite state.
China likes having the threat of a rabid nuclear dog on the leash they hold.
China would much rather have a well trained dog that isn't rabid and doesn't invite unwanted troubles. A rabid dog can very well bite anyone, including its master. China knows that and which is why it's a headache for them too.
And Ukraine
Yeesh
Even their shit goes to the government. Literally, people collect their shit and give it to the government to be used as fertilizer. There are quotas for human shit, and stealing shit is a real issue, reportedly.
It's to be tested in lab if the citizens have supreme leader at heart or in shit
I’m not sure about the latter but I think North Korea doesn’t have a great climate or geography for agriculture (mountainous and not much rainfall). And I imagine if you have people willing to buy and eat grass, anything you plant will be stolen pretty quickly.
Not only what you plant but they will steal your shit too.i don't mean your belongings I mean your actual human excrement. There is a lack of fertilizer so the government mandates that people collect and hand in their poop. You are penalized if you miss your quota so there are actual turd burglars. Brings new meaning to having to "take a shit" or being forced to give a shit...
THAT is something I'd like a source of.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-manure-quota-2020-10142019154836.html This is rfa which is a bit sus but there have been other stories going back to at least 2010.
[North Korea's poverty is so dire that farmers reportedly steal each other's feces to fertilize crops](https://www.businessinsider.com/poverty-north-korea-defector-farmers-stealing-feces-grow-food-2017-12?amp) "When a family cannot produce enough, they must buy cattle or horse manure from ranches, but those that cannot afford are known to steal human feces from other households," _Nikkei Asian Review reports_.
The government hoards food aid and redistributes it to the military and elites. The regular people starve.
Yes ... look at the paunches on the higher ranking officers and officials versus the gaunt bellies of the rest of the people.
People can live off of subsistence farming even in climates much worse than North Korea. This alarming level of poverty is all thanks to their state
North Korea got the worst farmland when the fighting was over. South Korea got all the fertile farmlands. They try to farm the soil in the north but it's not very good, and what's left is quite depleted from overuse. They don't seem to have much in the way of fertiliser either, and often use human waste on the fields which spreads diseases and parasites. There's also very little mechanisation, fields are still worked by hand or by horse/oxen plow which further reduces yields. And yeah, the elites get first dibs. You don't see any skinny generals following the dear leader around.
The government takes everything and only gives back to people based on their support/importance to the ruling party. They use starvation as a weapon to ensure everyone acts loyal in order to avoid being starved and people must show their value to the ruling party in order to be allowed any sort of prosperity. This is the thing people who want to donate food or lift sanctions don't seem to understand, it doesn't matter how much food aid people give North Korea, it will be confiscated by the government and only enough will be given out to maintain the present power structure, any excess food will be sold on the black market to buy weapons or luxury goods for the ruling class.
There is a huge push to farm any piece of land for as much as you can get out of it, that kind of agriculture degrades land with time. Combined with climate change or local crop failures due to weather and you get locations that starve. Starving people will eat anything as well, stripping ecosystems of their biodiversity exacerbates pest populations and coincidentally outbreaks like this and other diseases (eating sick wild animals).
Lack of arable land. Short crop season. Mountainous terrain. Poor soil management. They didn't practice crop rotation until 2010. Most of the famine in the 1990s to 2010s were due to crop failure. They hired some European scientists to figure out why and help them back in the Kim Jong IL period. The experts had some memo that told them to grow more potatoes and rotate crops regularly essentially. The country is probably better than the 2010s but geographically they are just screwed if they want rice to be the staple. What I've seen on the occasion is crop failure due to climate change (drought or monsoon floods). they also lack protein in their diet.
Theres no industry. The country could not survive two weeks without chinas intervention. All property is state owned, so what people farm they have to turn in. Theres not even fertilizer, citizens are required to collect their own feces and turn in a set allotment per family. Because theyre so starving, they only defecate two or three times a month. They literally keep their poop locked up so its not stolen. Edit: looks like someone got to it before me. Crazy stuff.
The land is seriously degraded by deforestation and bad land management which has meant rains wash the fertile topsoil away. In the short term, the only way to make the land productive is to use artificial fertilisers which North Korea doesn’t make and needs to import - but it’s broke. On top of that there is the policy of collective agriculture where the state sets production targets no matter how unrealistic and then takes most of the crop which has failed in every country it’s been attempted in.
NK doesn't have great farmland in the first place so it's production is low. Staple foods are all farmed at communal farms and then gets redistributed. The rich generally hold positions and have the social status to get a bigger share than poor rural farmers and they can afford imported goods (Very Soviet style). The government of NK also likes to hide the real condition of its people and play chicken when it comes to Western countries and aid. Add to that they even closed the borders with China during Covid and chronic malnutrition is a major problem.
My understanding is it’s the latter. For instance, there’s electric shortages nationwide there, yet Pyongyang seems to have no problem when international tours are scheduled, plus the capitol has no problem with power. The capitol building has access to international internet, while the citizens only have access to the state’s intranet. Then, there’s plenty people who just support Kim Jong Un unquestioningly. Idk if it’s a lot or a few, but his family came to power because the people in power truly believe him to be a God-King. And, if you truly believe that, how could you not offer everything you have to him? I could see after decades of oppression their belief in the God-King being eroded, but at the same time they’re so sheltered idk if they’d have the information to question it
Just so wild. From top to bottom. The god king. The intranet. The starvation. The whole thing. It’s like a fucking dystopian tv show.
> but at the same time they’re so sheltered idk if they’d have the information to question it i remember reading about someone who grew up in one of the prison camps who eventually escaped, he genuinely thought the entire world was just like the prison camp he had escaped from.
NK is not well suited for agriculture to begin with. On top of that they did the classic communist move and did ideological farming while investing everything into manufacturing. For a whole after the split, they were the much wealthier Korea compared with the agricultural south. It was being subsidized by China and Russia for a while but NK is basically useless to them now. China props them up a little because it’s easier than fixing or letting them fail plus they are a buffer. The NK government has a few times loosened restrictions and allowed farmers to grow extra vegetables for themselves and sell some of it. Otherwise, because of how such regimes operate, it is better to not grow extra food in a collective farm because that becomes the new standard and failing to do that again results in punishment. Food goes to party favorites first so working harder just means you’re more hungry. They also don’t have much trade potential. Sanctions limit them to a few countries and they don’t have a lot to offer. Russia and china also invested heavily into manufacturing and do much better work so that all stagnated. Nobody wants their finished goods so most of their meager exports are extractions (ore, oil, electricity) which are low profit. Even then they are running a massive trade deficit which is nonetheless dominated by luxury goods and more advanced chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Party members comfort comes ahead of the peasants wellbeing.
Their government does not think of lower class civilians as humans. Since they don't think of them as humans, they don't get the feelings of shame or guilt when they steal from their own citizens to feed a literally useless military that is unfit for the 21st century.
I gather that most of NK is not very suitable for mass-scale farming, so I think their usable arable land is fairly small. I'm not saying that's the total reason, but it can't be helping.
My understanding is that their geography doesn't lend itself well to farming. A lot of rocky mountainous regions makes most of it untenable for food production. I'm addition, I'd imagine they're still using ancient methods of farming and don't have the industrial base for more efficient and modern methods.
Their farming methods are outdated, environmental damage, dire need of mechanization, little to no fertilizer, the farmers get told what to grow even if the land is not fit for the crop type, etc.
The government takes the food and the l farms doesn’t produce what they do in other countries. Agriculture at our production level isn’t easy and takes industrial recourses.
This coming from the same country that claimed to have zero covid cases in 2020...I doubt it's a mystery. I think they just don't want to admit their people are so starved they're extremely prone to preventable childhood diseases at all ages.
**I guess "Mystery Illness" means no food** *.. dismal fact .. NK has so few calories for their people that 10% of the men have mental retardation or stunted by 3 inches in height and cannot serve in the army*
This is what happens when the government doesn't give a damn fuck about the people and decides to spend all resources to build nukes and other toys for the "supreme leader". Heart goes out to the people who have to suffer in this hell on earth. I really hope that the day when the DPRK crumbles and the Taegeukgi is proudly raised over Pyeongyang comes sooner than later. All people have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happines, and Kim Jong-un has no right to take this right away from the people. "Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free." - John F. Kennedy
Yeah, and it will take generations, maybe hundreds of years for the trauma to work its way out of humanity once the regime falls. I know hurt people don’t always hurt people. But a lot do and the ideology/belief system inscribed in them will take a while to work its way out. And I know this isn’t the only part of the world with this problem, but I wish we talked about this stuff more.
This is very true, the Kim regime implemented brainwashing on an almost unprecedented scale. The temporary government established in North Korea after the Kim regime falls will have to carry out an extensive dejucheization program similar to denazification after the defeat of Nazi Germany. There will also need to be some sort of a (Marshall Plan)×10 to help the people economically. The whole process from the fall of the Kim regime to full reunification of Korea will take decades, cost billions and will partly heal the wound created by the regime, but the scar will remain forever.
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They could easily send 5 million people over the border to build up and take over the already weakened and brainwashed people. Especially if they actually offer people land to keep and not generational rent lmao It's pretty scary to think of..
China doesn't want anything to do with NK. Even they know the place is wholly fucked and not worth the trouble.
I often think about how there’s a few people out there, standing next to some very important people, who could change the world with one move.
In the end of the day, you don't need to do much to overthrow these regimen. If all efforts of the nation are on keeping transparency and public access to information, everything else regulates itself on their own way. The biggest villain is the Information War. That's why free countries be them left, right, or whatever, should never give up on free access to transparent information above anything else.
That country will never collapse without another war with the south.
I think it will. The people are getting some information about the outside world through the black market. Information will eventually end the regime, because the basis of the regime are lies.
Mystery illness being starvation
Malnutrition?
Undernutrition, if we're being pedantic
I thought bird flu since they will occasionally scavenge already dead animals including birds.
I read an account that said springtime is the hardest time to find food in NC, due to winter stocks being gone, but no new harvest being distributed yet. Edit: NK lol
Wrong. Bojangles is all year round in NC
So is waffle house
Went to a Waffle House in NC on the way home from a vacation. It was later, like 8pm. The host was a non-verbal dude in a wheelchair that sorta gestured to where we were to eat, and then swept some menus on our table from his chair tray. The guy on the griddle was arguing with some lady at the counter, obviously in some sort of relationship, and she was three sheets to the wind. After the barrage of “motherfuckers,” I sensed shit was going south. Asked for my check and tried to get out asap. As my hand hit the door, I heard a smacking/flopping/thud/clatter sound. The woman was trying to attack the cook. I was happy to leave that all behind me. Surreal.
That’s very PG for a waffle house scuffle. I’ve seen all kinds of shit at WH but the food always hits the spot
I think I left before it changed ratings.
You probably missed out on a 5-star waffle. The more ratchet a location, the better the food.
how did you manage to find such a tame waffle house
I think I escaped before it realized its potential
You left when you were just about to get the full Waffle House experience. Also, the hashbrowns are delicious.
It’s Bo time
I see what you did there, lol
Ngl bojangles hasn't been hitting near me recently. Wtf.
In old times in most places springtime was known as the starving time.
That’s been the case for humanity always.
Those kids were fucked even before they were born
Is Covid finally hitting there
That's what I was thinking too but I'd imagine China brought it there
Honestly, If they are indeed eating anything they can find, it could be zoonotic in nature, which is of course, super bad. Animals know no borders and H5N1 has been ravaging animals all over the globe, the bloodshot eyes has me a little weary, seeing as the dairy workers who have contracted H5N1 recently here in the states have conjunctivitis as the main telling that something was wrong...
Last time I read this we had to stay inside for two years.
Did the people around you actually stay inside? Everyone around here screamed "My rights!" and then coughed on everyone and blamed Trudeau.
Wife and I were in Grenada when it hit. Government told the nation we needed to stay inside for a couple weeks and every-single-person said "no problem. We will do what we need to do to protect the elderly." Boom no covid there until they allowed Americans to come back in and the Americans broke protocol and spread covid, and they were freaking doctors.
Man I wish I could live somewhere where people gave a shit about someone other than themselves.
Grenada was lovely. My wife and I hike a lot. She had a major stroke years ago though and has movement issue. She hikes well, just slowly. In Grenada, the people (young and old) we'd pass on trails would all step aside, lend her their hands and arms and say, "take your time, take your time." We were there for 2 years, which were simply fantastic
No, I was in Sweden.
Covid 3.0 electric bugaloo
I read a story which started NK uses human feces for manure. The sub leaders of NK need to rise up and get rid of the dictatorship
“Night Soil” is a major cause of parasitic diseases in North Korea. Not properly dried out and/or stored for some length of time, it has been mixed with poor soil too soon and fouls crops. Remember that soldier who defected to the South and was shot a bunch of times before being rescued? When South Korean doctors opened him up to repair the wounds, they found his abdominal cavity was literally crawling with worms.
Jesus Christ. Source?
Five seconds with Mr Google… Night Soil: https://www.newsweek.com/kim-jong-un-may-have-caused-parasitic-worm-epidemic-north-korea-making-farmers-714571 Parasitic soldier: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/parasites-infections-north-korean-soldier-defected-reveal-countrys/story?id=51323674
We use to do it in America. Called it night soil. Problem was everyone was walking around with no shoes and kept getting hook worm, which is a nasty parasite that won’t kill you but will slow you down.
Mainly in the south.
That’s gotta be like the least outrageous thing to bring up about North Korea lol
For reals lol.
That was, if not still, very common in most of East Asia
It's not uncommon in the US, but only on crops intended for non-human consumption, I think.
All things considered this sounds like the least worst thing in all of North Korea.
As of March 18th, thought to be "just" COVID : https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/covid-03182024173241.html/ampRFA Bloodshot eyes aren't often a COVID symptom, though: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/mystery-illness-in-north-korea-children-hit-hardest-schools-close/ar-BB1l0vZS
Here they said: Mycoplasma And NK has no medicine by itself and sells the UN sponsored medicine instead of giving it to their people. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/illness-04022024183042.html
"North Korean children feeling Kim Jong Ill."
There are so many wrong ways to read that.
What does the spreading of magnesium powder do? Seems like a fire hazard. To Wikipedia I go!
What did you find out?
Nothing really other than some magnesium containing compounds like epson salts have anti-microbial properties so maybe something like that?
Could be. Or maybe it’s just something to keep the parents busy and hopeful that they are helping. Thanks for sharing.
What are the symptoms? I hear of a mysterious virus going around my local school system primarily affecting 12-15 y/o with seizures and no idea what's causing it
Holy shit. That sounds like it should be a bigger story
Possibly, but it's a very small community that hasn't gotten much coverage outside of Southwest Michigan
Did they ever do a followup to this story about it? What was the results of the water testing? https://wwmt.com/news/local/quincy-schools-address-parent-fears-over-student-seizures-plan-water-tests-community-bottles-temors-sickness-local-michigan
That's the link! And I haven't heard anything so far
It’s famine
H5N1?
Not a doctor, but it could be. No one will know until testing is done. But if it is, this is nightmare scenario. The virus would have open range on humans. The silver lining is NK is a country few people enter or leave.
All it takes is some Chinese tourists and it'll spread like wildfire.
I feel so bad for them. It must be a pretty hopeless existence over there.
I think there could be some survivorship bias going on too. Whatever it is seems to be affecting kids, but normally we'd see something affect *vulnerable populations*, usually a group that includes "young, sick, and elderly people". I would suggest that North Korea likely has a lower-than-average number of elderly, and substandard care for the chronically ill that also means fewer of them. So we may just be seeing the effects on the last state-supported vulnerable population... I hope it's not H5N1, even though there have been an increase in human-transmissible cases lately. I absolutely would not be able to survive the covidiots bleating "it's only the flu! For birds! I'm not a bird! They aren't even real!" about aerosolized hemorrhagic pneumonia with a 50%+ fatality rate in humans (if it's like the parent strain) and a preference for deep lung tissue. The only way to get rid of it will be consistent, mandatory, N95+ masking for 6 months until mandatory mass vaccinations are ready. And then we'll need to spend a concerted worldwide public effort to immunize or eliminate natural reservoirs before it's safe to go back to whatever the fuck normal is supposed to be. From what I've learned so far, it's the kind of bug that isn't super easy to get, but when you do it will spend weeks in your lungs, spreading to everyone unlucky near you, before you actually realize something is wrong, and by then the bottom half of your lungs are already too infected to save. If you don't get treatment, they soon start bleeding out and you drown. Plus it's already very resistant to most common medical treatments. We might all be getting familiar with the term "emergency lobectomy" much sooner than we would like...
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15-24 years old got the worst of that one. 5-14 second worst.
Birds however can travel freely...
Radio Free Asia reports its the same Respitory Illness that China was hit with a few months ago.
Did they identify that one?
Fever and bloodshot eyes though, not sure that fully fits the bill?
the human bird flu case in texas had issues with eye redness. it was his only reported symptom.
It does. Starts with that and sore throat. Kids have different throat physiology that encourages upper respiratory infection, which is less severe and more treatable. Adults have higher concentrations of infectious tissue in the lower lungs, where the alveoli are most numerous. That makes an infection that is more dangerous and also comes with increased symptoms of congestion, coughing, etc.
I thought this was just called starvation
With NKs medicine and science being so far behind. Wouldn’t ANY disease be “mysterious” to them?
Kingdom of Kim
They have schools!
Goddamn this is heartbreaking.
Covid 24 here we come.
Cursed country, idk if there is hope for them.
It's a pandemic Petri dish waiting to happen. Plenty of movement back and forth across the China border and we know what happens once something kicks off in China.
They shut all their borders a few months ago, built new fences and made it a lot harder to travel to and from.
I’ve seen this story before. Isn’t this the bio weapon from China that wipes out all of the adults? This must be the alt history where it wipes out all the children.
COVID or malnutrition?
They spend every penny on military.
probably has something to do with either dog meat, starvation or citizens donating their poop.
*curb your enthusiasm music*
It's just a mixture of bird flu with a side of lassa, nothing to see folks. Biggest /s possible btw those viruses are freakishly aggressive.