These are the people we worry about in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
They are the poor, undernourished, parasite-ridden mothers and babies of North Korea. It is not possible to worry about the Kim Dynasty elite under the current circumstances.
Mr. Kim and his government are not starving. They continue to live a very comfortable life. It’s the ordinary DPRK Korean people who are starving to death. The Korean war needs to be ended by the parties. Only civilians are being killed.
Western media suggests that the very young DPRK President Kim Jong-un has starved his own people to help pay for nuclear weapons, but RINJ Foundation members in North Korea suggest that is not true. They claim former President Kim Jong-il left a very large cash reserve at the time of his death. It is rumoured that his son, the current President, took a decision to bite the bullet and regardless of global opposition, get past the point of being armed commensurate with the USA nuclear threat. Mr. Kim allegedly used the reserve funds and continued the escalated development project his father had launched.
Most North Koreans see the USA as a bully and fear a repeat of the 1950s American massacre of thirty percent of the Korean population using high explosive bombs and napalm bombs in a carpet bombing strategy. Mr. Kim also looks at the calamitous American “regime change” massacres killing an aggregate of millions of civilians in Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Chile, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine and so on.
In other words, considering that the Korean War never ended and that America resorted to extensive war crimes in North Korea causing the deaths of millions, the DPRK government and its people justifiably fear American invasion for nearly 70 years and probably hate the country and all it stands for in their eyes.
The Korean War needs to be ended by the parties.
Additional humanitarian groups and thoughtful peace-seeking leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin are joining The RINJ Foundation Women’s urging that the two main parties to the Korean War sit down at a table and negotiate an end to the Korean war.
The cost of military expenditures must surely have taken its toll on the population’s health but global bullying with sanctions have only hurt the ordinary people of North Korea. These are the same people the media clamours about once they manage to escape from their country. What those escapees have left behind is much worse than what you see. The escapees are the able and strong. Most of the malnourished have a hard time getting through a day upright and walking.
Under the socio-political ideology of Juche in North Korea, the country’s people are to be self-sufficient to as great an extent possible. The government does provide food for the hungry and organizations like UNICEF provide vitamin supplements to create a response to malnourishment among children. We don’t know how many kids are dying but UNICEF estimates some 60,000 are at immediate risk.
Years of sanctions that impact all peasants in the country have dried up sources of food, fuel and clean water. Eating only two meals a day was once the norm in the DPRK, now more than 3.5 million eat only one meal or less per day.
Famine has set in this winter in North Korea. Nobody knows exactly how bad things are, especially in the cold north. Communications are scanty.
Men like Donald Trump, who is, strange to say, now the USA President after being an American ‘reality show’ entertainer, and Kim Jong-un, the latest leader of the DPRK descendant from the ruling Kim family, don’t focus on their actions having impact on women and children. Donald Trump uses the starving children to ridicule Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim and his government are not starving. They continue to live a very comfortable life. That may not be true for government officials who have fallen from Mr. Kim’s grace. They await their murder as Kim grows crankier at Donald Trump and other so-called ‘Western’ leaders opposed to the DPRK. Meanwhile it’s the ordinary DPRK Korean people who are starving to death.
Basic protein and calorie malnutrition is leaving children and their families in a high risk of death. Diarrhea caused by failing sanitation, desperate eating habits lacking safe food preparation precautions and poor drinking water is killing babies.
Unicef says 200,000 North Korean children suffer from acute malnutrition, including 60,000 with the most severe form that can be lethal. Food shortages are becoming worse.
Even though humanitarian aid is supposed to be excluded from the UN Security Council sanctions, the infrastructure that would facilitate payment, shipping and handling is retient to participate because of the widespread belief that all North Koreans are evil and because, as they say, they may be accused of sanction-busting”.