Starvation in North Korea
North Korea has long remained a mystery to many Americans, due to a long history of conflict and poor relations with them makes getting insight on this problem a challenge. This makes it difficult to study the issues of the Republic. However the country is going through a severe famine and has been when early symptoms began to so in 1997, information is now available, “The Famine has affect North Korea for about three decades now. It has affected majority of the 25 million Koreans and is still spreading. One can attribute this crisis to, poor planning, isolation and a misguided policy of self-sufficiency.”(Blakemore). After the Korean war when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea became its own unified state in 1950 it had been clear that the nation could emdur economic problems. But the new republic was able to elude them by allying with the Soviet Union and other nations, this allowed them to get resource to sustain their country. By the 90s North Korea could no longer fend-off the internal attacks of the famine. This was due to the countries varias problem which includes, natural disasters,
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The Supreme leaded had a firm grip on all ration and the distribution. He did not hand out ratios based on how much one needed but by how much power one had. “Elites and those loyal to the government were given more food than the elderly, children and others.[...] the aid that fed North Koreans faltered and then stopped altogether”(Blakemore). During the Kim Jong Il era the slogan “We can live without sugar but we can’t live without bullets”. This show cased the country’s pursuit for a supreme military power. So much so the they prioritized it over the heath of its people. “As recently as March 2017, a UN report estimated that 20 percent of the population was still “food insecure and undernourished”. (Dunlop