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North Koreans Face Cold, Hungry Winter
When North Korean leader Kim Jong Il visited a factory where none of the workers was wearing an overcoat, he took off his own before having his picture taken with them. The gesture from their Great Leader deeply touched the workers, state-run media said. It was cheaper than buying them coats, wasn't it? Such tales abound these days from the communist state's Korean Central News Agency as the isolated regime tries desperately to boost the morale of people in one of the world's poorest countries. This year, North Koreans face the prospect of their coldest, hungriest winter in years. The United States and its allies have stopped supplying fuel oil ever since the North revealed that it has been running a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 accord with Washington. And the World Food Program said it will not be able to reach 2.9 million vulnerable North Koreans - barring immediate contributions from major donors such as the United States and Japan, which are increasingly unhappy about helping the recalcitrant Pyongyang regime. If the U.S. contributes, I'm gonna bitch. If we have to contribute to someone, pick a country that's not run by lunatics. Of course, the countries that aren't run by lunatics or infested by lunatics usually don't need so much aid, do they? The immediate victims will be the North's children and elderly - including 760,000 children in nurseries - who depend on outside relief, says the WFP, the Rome-based U.N. relief agency that coordinates aid shipments to North Korea. I'd call them the responsibility of the NKor government, not ours. When they've hung their Dear Leader and his henchmen, then we should send them lots of groceries until they're on their feet. North Korea advocates ``juche,'' or self-reliance, as a national philosophy. But it was reduced to begging for outside aid starting in the mid-1990s when Ethel! My violin, please! Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-12-27 |
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