It is frustrating to provide food aid to a corrupt, inefficient, militarily aggressive regime that may steal much of what is donated, and will certainly use international support to maintain outsized spending on arms, nuclear bombs, and missiles. Yet hunger cannot be an instrument of international diplomacy. The most pragmatic and humanitarian step the Obama Administration can take to promote stability during North Korea’s political transition is to deliver needed food to the country’s disenfranchised population—and as soon as is practical.
“North Korea’s Hunger”, The New Yorker
Musan’s proximity to the Chinese border made it easier for her family to obtain food and engage in trade. Song-hee’s mother sold socks, both Chinese- and North Korean-made, at the market. Her father, like most of the men in Musan, worked in the iron mines. The family had cleared a plot of land on a hillside outside town in order to grow vegetables, an illegal but common practice in North Korea. Their various sources of income allowed them to eat regular meals of white rice, the staple of the relatively well-off, while their neighbors could eat only corn. Once or twice a month, Song-hee got a fried egg on top of a bowl of rice. Occasionally, she could go to the market and buy a banana, her favorite food. Her proudest possession was an MP3 player that had Chinese pop music on it. She could recharge the battery on the rare evenings that the electricity at home was working.
From this brilliant, heartbreaking 2010 New Yorker article on life in North Korea
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