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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| North Koreans cut off and freezing to death |
| 2007-01-22 |
| I must've missed this when it was in KCNA... The men who finally made it into the remote highland village of Koogang were greeted by an eerie silence and a gruesome sight. Lying among the simple wooden huts and burnt remnants of wooden furniture, they found the bodies of 46 North Korean villagers, including women and children, all of whom had frozen to death. Cut off from the outside world by one of the harshest winters in many years, the villagers had suffered a macabre fate that has exposed both the desperate poverty and callous misrule blighting the Stalinist state. More than 300 people are thought to have perished from cold so far this winter in North Korea's mountainous north, victims of temperatures as low as -30C and of an arrogant ruling clique. "Nobody got out of the trap alive," said an official at the Chinese embassy in the capital, Pyongyang, who confirmed the events of Koogang. "After heavy snowfalls, there was a severe frost. The inhabitants were doomed." In a country notorious for its secretiveness, the regime of President Kim Jong-il has made no mention of the deaths. As the rest of the population struggle to stay warm, 50,000 members of his ruling elite continue to live in splendid isolation in a compound in central Pyongyang – enjoying the benefits of hot water, central heating and satellite television. Elsewhere in the city, though, the scene could have been lifted from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. The air is thick with the smell of coal dust, as families light fires on the floors of their apartments to keep out the bitter, cold winds that blow south from Siberia. Outside Pyongyang, the situation is yet more desperate. A six-mile drive from the city, poor farmers trudge through the snow with bundles of brushwood on their backs. A massive process of deforestation, begun in the 1990s by Kim Jong-il's father and predecessor, Kim il Sung, has resulted in huge swathes of forest being chopped down to clear land for farming. The disastrous policy led to large-scale soil erosion, believed by many to have been a leading cause of mass famine of the 1990s, when up to three million people starved to death. It has made the bitter winter, when the temperature in the capital routinely falls to -13C, even more dangerous as the rural poor struggle to gather enough firewood to sustain them. The inhabitants of Koogang, around 200 miles north-east of the capital, set fire to tables and chairs, even tearing down the wood from their own homes in a desperate attempt to keep warm. The World Food Programme estimates that North Korea will be 900,000 tons short of the amount of food needed to feed its 23 million population this year. Aid efforts have been complicated by sanctions, imposed after Kim Jong-il's regime carried out a nuclear test in October last year. Last week, the country held negotiations with US diplomats aimed at re-starting six-party peace talks, which also include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Christopher Hill, America's chief envoy at the talks in Berlin, signalled progress, saying that the US looked forward "to establishing a normal relationship with North Korea". But while there may be signs of a thaw in the country's frosty relationship with the West, in Pyongyang there is no respite from the sub-zero temperatures. The electricity supply is notoriously unreliable and as evening falls the city streets are plunged into darkness. The only constant source of light is the giant illuminated copper statue of Kim il Sung on a hill top overlooking the city – cold comfort for those living through the bleak North Korean mid-winter. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #22 Looks like the Evil Bush Neocon Clique put the "brutal Afghan winter" into cold storage for a few years, then shifted it to the northwest and brought it out to massacre another victim of American imperialism. /channeling moonbats Whenever I think of campus activists denouncing American imperialism, I have this vivid flashback to that ape mob chanting and beating their chests in one of the Planet of the Apes sequels. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2007-01-22 23:38 |
| #21 Don't be silly, read the story not the fluff. Wild koreans heat their one room stick and sheet metal hovels with charcoal/wood firepit/stoves. The fumes are vented thru hollow floor tiles. The exhaust warms the floor, which heats the room pretty well...until it leaks. During winter cold, cold damp arctic winds blow across Siberia, out of Mongolia across the yellow sea (yellow from the desert dust). Block the leaks where the wind comes in (and it always comes in), the CO builds up and you either wake up puking, or don't wake up and they find you blue...and frozen in the morning. Hundreds of families die every winter. Joe's nuts, again. MRE's are 4000 calories, a fat american diet is 1500-2000. The wild koreans get by on 800-1000 while working the fields. The diet is mostly carbs with little protein so little free thought. They don't vote, they don't revolt either. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2007-01-22 22:55 |
| #20 Ok OK ouch! I give! Uncle. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2007-01-22 22:18 |
| #19 No blaming Kimmie-boy is exactly right. Odd you don't hear of this type of thing in Siberia or China. Heck doesn't Harbin China (NW of N. Korea) regularly put on an ice festival in February? No it is Kimmie's fault for not providing for his people. He is the 'Dear Leader' - he is responsible. He should make sure that there is food available - and ample fuel for heat and cooking. Instead he blows it on Nuclear Weapons - which isn't cheap. Perhaps this article is a bit over-the-top. But look at the byline - By Sergey Soukhorukov in Pyongyang. This guy is right there. I noticed lately that Kim isn't missing any meals. Remember - This is the Workers Paradise the left worships. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2007-01-22 22:08 |
| #18 2000 is only the minima - true threshold is 5000-plus for normal human activity be it active or passive. 2000 a day > are still gonna hear desperate? complaints "I'm so hungry/thirsty", becuz it taint enuff. AND, when considering that to offset famine large numbers of local MOSTLY MEN + MOSTLY MALE YOUTHS to keep working the fields 24-7-365 in attempts to grow satisf yields of edible crops, then we're actually talking 10,000-plus MINIMUM A DAY, NOT COUNTING WATER. * WHY OIL-FOR-FOOD/KOFI-GATE(S) BECUZ, BY THE ABOVE, UNO DONATIONS > BARELY ENUFF TO RELIEVE SOME OF DAILY HUNGER PAINS OF THE STARVING. IFF ANYTHING, JUST PROLONGING THEIR DEATH AGONY. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-01-22 19:53 |
| #17 I'll give ya Kim is an ass, can't manage geopolitical issues, and cares less about the people in his country than his atomic plans. I frankly thought we would have gone to blows with him right after his father died and I wonder why we allow him to continue. I just can't stand the running editorial and cheap propaganda effort of this article. This is the kind of journalism that signifies everything wrong with todays MSM. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2007-01-22 19:41 |
| #16 Anonymoose - and then Kimmie will be warm for eternity. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2007-01-22 18:01 |
| #15 And just a few MOABs in that central compound in Pyongyang might mean the downfall of the entire regime. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-01-22 17:33 |
| #14 No, blaming Kimmie is right on target, Pan. If Kimmie had shown the political sense of Deng, Giap, or the Iraqi Communist Party, the NorKors would not be literally dying in the dark and cold. The innate ability of Kimmie to reverse the stupidity of the NorKor nuke program and thereby gain all the economic and political benefits that would entail lays the blame squarely at his feet. Hell, he could simply announce "a nuclear freeze on the Korean peninsula", and scored huge with the international community; add in a mealy-mouthed non-apology to the Japanese {"I am sorry that my missile tests showed your vulnerabilities and made you pee your pants"}, and he could even get the cash freeze lifted. But, because of his ego and stupidity, his people are dying like starving rats in an icehouse. Even Saddam was smart enough to play the sanctions game, with controlled TV coverage of the sick and dying. Kimmie could gangsta literal tons of food and coal from South Korea with televised pictures of the suffering of the common man in NorKor. Add in the kneejerk reaction of Oxfam, HRW, and the UN, and you are talking enough food, oil, medicine, and clothing to take care of the whole freaking population for at least 3 years. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2007-01-22 17:09 |
| #13 Of that 900,000 tons, the ruling elite would steal about 300,000 and the rest would go to the army. They are beyond trusting, the people that need the food wouldn't see a grain of rice. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2007-01-22 16:53 |
| #12 North Korea will be 900,000 tons short How much would that be in lawn seed? |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2007-01-22 16:22 |
| #11 Burn a few Taepo Dongs, then eat the ashes. You'll feel better. |
| Posted by: Mark Z 2007-01-22 16:05 |
| #10 This is a bit much and blaming Kim for this is like blaming Bush for global warming. Even if this report was 100% true, the retoric attached to it makes it nothing more than propaganda and destroys all credibility. Kim needs to go away and most everyone knows this, but a -30 cold snap will kill just about any third world provance, hell they live in shacks. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2007-01-22 15:10 |
| #9 One of those little daily items Diane Sawyer and ABC News missed, I guess. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2007-01-22 14:50 |
| #8 So as Dear Leader causes his population to die off through various mis-steps, when will he wake up to see there are no more young people available to serve in his army? |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-01-22 14:48 |
| #7 The earth rotates around Great Leader. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-01-22 14:08 |
| #6 I wonder if it rotates with the sun like Turkmenbashi's? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-01-22 14:02 |
| #5 The only constant source of light is the giant illuminated copper statue of Kim il Sung on a hill top overlooking the city. Nice to know the Dear Leader has his priorities straight. |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-01-22 13:20 |
| #4 the villagers had suffered a macabre fate that has exposed both the desperate poverty and callous misrule blighting the Stalinist state. More than 300 people are thought to have perished from cold so far this winter in North Korea's mountainous north, victims of temperatures as low as -30C and of an arrogant ruling clique. Would any major American media outlet speak so plainly? Even Fox tempers their NKor coverage with more "neutral" language. |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2007-01-22 12:56 |
| #3 Damn that global warming. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-01-22 12:53 |
| #2 900,000 tons grain is enough to feed 4.5 million on a 2,000 Calorie/day diet. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-01-22 12:52 |
| #1 What % is a 900,000 ton shortfall? How many lbs / person / year? Seems like this has gotta be a shortfall of greater than 25% or 30%. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2007-01-22 12:38 |