Refugees flee famine ravaging North Korea

The closely guarded border between North Korea and China . Photo: AP

FOUR North Koreans who recently risked their lives to flee across the closely guarded border with China say that families are scouring the countryside for wild plants in a desperate attempt to stave off starvation.
''Some people are having to eat manure when they cannot get rice or corn,'' said one refugee, 68-year-old Kim Yeong.
The United Nations World Food Program says North Korea faces its worst food shortage in a decade, with 6 million people at risk and the regime is unwilling to spend its dwindling hard currency reserves on buying food for its population of 24 million.

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Heavy rain from July 12 to 15 destroyed or submerged more than 20,000 hectares of farmland across the country, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
But the world has been slow to react for fear of propping up the increasingly belligerent regime of Kim Jong-il, which is vigorously pursuing a nuclear weapons program and threatening its South Korean neighbour. That led the US to suspend food aid in 2008.
Aid agencies report that government food rations for some have been cut to just 200 grams a day.
Last week, after making its own assessment, the European Commission offered €10 million ($A13.3 million) in emergency food aid to Pyongyang, warning that 500,000 people faced starvation, with children already suffering acute malnutrition.
In embassy cables leaked last year it emerged that then foreign minister Alexander Downer told a top US commander in February 2005 that aid to North Korea should be withheld and the country allowed to ''go to shit, that's the best thing that could happen''.
The four refugees are living in the Chinese town of Yanji, working in secret to support their families back home.
Housewife Lee Sun Ok, 63, fears for her security in a city where police pay rewards to anyone who denounces a North Korean migrant. Sitting on the floor of her apartment, below the line of sight of anyone outside, she recalled approaching a crowd in the North Korean border town of Musan.
''I went up to see what they were looking at,'' she said. ''It was the body of an old man with a piece of cloth over his face.
''I asked if he had fallen down because he was sick, but the people shook their heads and said, 'No, he was just too hungry and died for lack of something to eat'.''
Mrs Lee works as a carer for an ethnic Korean family in Yanji, and earns 1200 yuan ($A175) a month. She sends most of it back to her family via smugglers, who take a 30 per cent cut.
''There is a real shortage of food in North Korea,'' she said. ''People … are already starving to death.''
Kim Yeong has five grandchildren across the border.
''They are very weak,'' he said. ''My heart hurt every time I saw them; the impact of what they are suffering will take two generations to heal.''
Unlike Mrs Lee, Mr Kim is not a poor farmer but a member of North Korea's ''revolutionary class'' whose parents fought against the Japanese occupation - entitling him, until North Korea's economic collapse, to additional rations.
''People walk around with bundles on their backs, and inside they carry their whole lives,'' he said. ''Whatever they have to sell or to eat, small household items, some rice cakes. It is all they have.''
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The names of those interviewed for this article have been changed to protect their identities.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/refugees-flee-famine-ravaging-north-korea-20110717-1hk2a.html#ixzz1SQkcrDCv