North Koreans who are completely dependent on shops owned by the state only receive 300 grams of food per person per day or nearly half of the original ration. This appears from a leaked memo at the United Nations.
The Dutch Korea expert Remco Breuker states that the memo was deliberately leaked to make it clear that the world – with Trump – Is allowing North-Koreans to crumble if UN sanctions are maintained. That uncomfortable message must have caused the North Korean regime the necessary headaches. After all, the failed harvests reveal the failure of the communist sanctuary. “Although there will always be a way to blame Japan, the US, and South Korea.”
The North Korean UN ambassador Kim Song writes in the document that his country produced 503,000 tons less food last year than a year earlier. According to him, this is due to unprecedented high temperatures, the drought, heavy rainfall and the international punitive measures against the regime in Pyongyang. He calls the sanctions “barbaric and inhuman” and wants food aid from international organizations.
Next week, dictator Kim Jong-un meets US President Donald Trump. The commitment is clear: Kim wants the sanctions off the table. He can even feed his extended army with difficulty.
Malnutrition inevitable
For 300 grams of food, a simple person cannot live with it. The Nutrition Center says that a healthy mix of proteins, carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables and dairy products weighs 2 kilos per day per person. Malnutrition is inevitable with so little food.
North Korea, like all Communist states in the past, has great difficulty in keeping agricultural production up to standard. The decades-long food shortage has major consequences. A North Korean is 15 centimeters smaller than a South Korean. Life expectancy is 67 years, while people in the South become more than 80 years old.
Kim himself is a corpulent male (1.70 meters, 130 kilos). With a BMI of 45, the dictator is morbidly obese. “Other laws apply to him. He is a great leader and a living god. But look at the elite around him. Those people are not fat.”
Gray market
What do the North Koreans get with that 300 grams? “It will not be meat. With a bit of luck, it is rice, but it will probably be a cereal.”
“There is a lively gray market: people keep chickens in a shed and rabbits on the balcony. Or they produce a little more than reported and then sell that surplus. It is tolerated because without that gray market the country starves. And there is a lot of illegal import from China. Border guards are bribed. The border with South Korea is tight, but the one with China is as porous as what.”
In the 1990s, the food shortage led to a famine in North Korea. “An incredible slaughter. There were reports of mountains piled up. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500,000 to 3 million.” Kim will want to prevent a new humanitarian disaster at all costs. “There is a fit of popular anger when the time comes again. When you see your children die, you are capable of everything. This regime does not survive a second famine.”
