Pictures

Video

Audio

Maps

Papers

Mobilization

Links

join the NK World Network

read the North Korea Investigative Report

1999 NK news headlines

North Koreans Turning to "Alternative Food"
(May 7, 1999)

Reuters (Corinne Vigniel, "N.KOREAN FAMINE VICTIMS TURN TO 'ALTERNATIVE FOOD'," Chongjin, 05/07/99) reported that a factory in the DPRK's third-largest city of Chongjin is making noodles from 50 percent wheat, 20 percent maize cobs, 20 percent tree leaves, and 10 percent grass. David Morton, UN humanitarian coordinator for the DPRK, said during a tour of the city on Thursday, "They have very little nutritional value and are basically a stomach filler. Eating it can cause serious problems such as digestive difficulties, particularly among the children and elderly." He added, "The months of May and June are particularly serious because by now the harvest from last year had been fully distributed and there is no more left to distribute." Morton said that the World Food Program believed that the northeast was hardest hit because "They still have a lot of people living in industrial cities and where industrial cities have been affected by fuel and energy shortages, the factory workers, people working in mines ... are particularly vulnerable. So we are trying to target additional food to the areas we think are particularly affected by food shortages." Morton visited Chongjin with aid officials from the US, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. At a pediatric hospital in Chongjin, director Im Yong-nam said, "From January until March this year we have had some 4,200 patients with 550 of them malnourished children. In 1998, the hospital treated some 10,000 children of which 3,000 were suffering from malnutrition." He added, "It used to take 25 days for them to recover but now the treatment is longer because we have no medicine for full recovery."

Homeless Children Killed and Flesh Sold
(March 30, 1999)

The Associated Press (John Leicester, "HUNGRY NORTH KOREANS FLEE TO CHINA," Yanji, 03/30/99) reported that a former DPRK soldier who fled into the PRC said that people in his village near Chongjin were dying every day from hunger, cold, or accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms when scavenging for food. He added that he saw three people executed by gunshot last year for killing vagrant children and selling their flesh at a market. Lee Soo-nam, a health inspector in Yanji, a PRC city near the border with the DPRK, stated, "We are all the same people. They are coming here to survive." Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said that the situation in the DPRK "is not an African type of famine. It's a slow famine. It's a creeping famine. It's a gradual, general reduction of society's ability to keep itself alive."

$25 Million Monthly Wired to North Korea for Tourism
(March 14, 1999)

The Washington Post carried an analytical article (Don Oberdorfer ("A NATION WITH AN IRON FIST AND AN OUTSTRETCHED HAND," 03/14/99, B05) which said that the famine in the DPRK has forced the country to become increasingly dependent on outside assistance. The article argued, "This shift represents a sea change in the country's relations with the outside world--one that, in the long run, is likely to have a greater effect on this bitterly divided peninsula than the current controversy over a clandestine nuclear facility or concern about its surprisingly sophisticated ballistic missile program." It quoted ROK President Kim Dae-jung as saying, "In the past year, we have had some positive responses" from the DPRK. Kim added that "The most remarkable thing" was the DPRK's response to his policy of separating politics from economics. The article also said that US-DPRK negotiations on the underground construction site "present a vivid illustration of the mercantile security policies being practiced by the impoverished North Korean regime." It also noted that many government officials in the ROK and the US are "apprehensive" about the uses to which the DPRK could put revenue from Mt. Kumgang tourism, which are being wired in US$25 million monthly installments to a DPRK account at the Bank of China in Macao. The article quoted ROK Minister of Unification Kang In-duk as saying that he will keep a close eye on how these funds are spent, implying that he would take action to halt the payments if the money were used for military purposes. The article quoted DPRK defector Hwang Jang-yop as saying that the DPRK "could live without international aid in the past" but that now "they need the international aid." Hwang emphasized, however, that in the DPRK "politics dominates economics." He added, "I am sure [they] understand that there is no alternative strategy to brinkmanship" for the DPRK. Hwang also said that shortly before he defected, he was informed by the statistical bureau of the Workers Party that more than 1.5 million people, including many party members, had died of starvation or related illnesses in the previous two years. The article concluded, "An increasingly dependent yet fundamentally irreconcilable North Korea, and an engagement-minded South Korea, have entered a new era. Once again, the two Korean states are becoming the central players in the half-century-old drama on the divided peninsula."

Newborns weigh less than 4 1/2 pounds
(March 6, 1999)

The Associated Press ("NKOREA MAY FACE NEW FOOD SHORTAGE," Beijing, 03/06/99) reported that Kathi Zellweger of the Catholic relief group Caritas said Saturday that DPRK food supplies will run out by the end of April, and the next harvest is not expected until the end of May. Zellweger stated, "It looks like a difficult spring again." She added that, during her recently completed trip to the DPRK, she saw few babies and pregnant women, and believed the birth rate was far lower than normal. She said that pregnant women were thin, and newborns generally weighed less than 4 1/2 pounds, less than the minimum birth weight of 5 1/2 pounds recommended by the World Health Organization. She also said that agriculture in the DPRK is beginning to make improvements, but the changes will take a long time.

4 Million North Koreans suffering from Tuberculosis
(March 5, 1999)

Agence France-Presse ("NORTH KOREA EASES RESTRICTIONS ON DESERTERS AS FAMINE BITES," Seoul, 03/05/99) reported that ROK officials said Friday that the DPRK has relaxed punishment to its citizens caught fleeing the country in search of food. An unnamed official of the government-run National Institute for Reunification said stated, "According to information received, between two and three million people have died over the past two to three years." The claims came in a White Paper on the state of human rights in the DPRK issued by the ROK's Unification Ministry. The report added that, despite the relaxation of punishment for those fleeing the country, overall human rights are scarcely improved. It said, that more than 200,000 political prisoners, including some who were "abducted" from the ROK, are in custody in 10 places across the country where they are deprived of basic rights and subjected to "atrocities." The paper estimated that as many as 200,000 DPRK citizens were illegally living in the PRC, Russia, and other neighboring countries. Intelligence sources in the ROK said that DPRK border guards are no longer issued with bullets to open fire on those escaping the country. The report also said that around four million DPRK citizens were suffering from tuberculosis.

$90 Million spent on Kim Jong-il's Birthday
(February 17, 1999)

Izvestia's Yuriy Savenkov ("'WITHOUT US YOU WILL NOT EXIST AS WELL'," Moscow, 3, 2/17/99) reported that the whole of the DPRK celebrated Kim Jong-il's 57th birthday. According to Japanese media, a secret ROK report said that over US$90 million was spent on the celebration. Some 500,000 tons of corn could have been bought with that money.