Threadsters:
IMHO there are lots of Americans who rue the destruction of American culture in America. What passes for American culture in the MacDonaldizing of the world is not American culture. It is the easiest, cheapest way between two points. As H.L.Menken said many years ago, "You can never loose money misjudging the bad taste and vulgarity of the American public."
This should today read, "You can never loose money misjudging the vulgarity and bad taste of the public... everywhere in the world."
Between times another story that is not being reported well in the trailer park and the strip mall nor for that matter, probably in Zurich. We are living in the best and worst of times.
For Private Use Only
North Korea: Famine toll two million, says cadre
cJASPER BECKER on the North Korean border and the South China Post
Nearly 10 per cent of the population - about two million people - have died in the famine gripping the country, a middle-ranking official interviewed in China said.
"I've travelled to different parts of the country and so many people are dying that no one now bothers to keep a record of the deaths," said the official, a well-connected Worker's Party member. She said little food was reaching ordinary people. So many were moving around the country searching for food that the Government could no longer monitor the population and its movements, she said.
In Hamhung, the country's largest industrial centre, half the houses and flats were empty. She said people could not even sell an 80-square-metre apartment for 100 yuan (HK$93). She confirmed the claims of refugees that most people had received no grain through public distribution for nearly two years. North Koreans assume most relief grain is being diverted by the cadres.
"The food is going to the troops and the cadres are hoarding up to a year's grain for themselves and their families," said a 27-year-old engineering student who had walked from Hamhung and illegally entered China.
The official said that in Hyesan, a relatively prosperous city of 200,000 people, no one had received full rations since 1994.
In 1996, rations for only 13 days' worth of grain were distributed and nothing at all in 1997. This year 6.6 kilograms of corn per person was distributed. She said her relatives in Pyongyang, all party members, were eating only one meal a day. "What is happening to the relief food? Are they reselling it for foreign exchange?" she asked. Other refugees interviewed said they also believed about 10 per cent of the population had died and a further 10 per cent were going without food.
The student said more than 10 per cent of Hamhung's population, which once stood at 700,000, had died, his mother among them. Another 10 per cent had left the city. He said that last year, at the height of a cholera epidemic, 80 people were dying each day. A similar death rate was reported in other cities. Male workers had been sent to the countryside to grow food, others relied on selling what they scavenged. However, aid agencies insist relief food is going to the neediest groups, especially children.
North Korean refugees hiding in China have confirmed horrific stories of cannibalism, according to a South Korean aid organisation. Korean-Chinese associates of the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement, a South Korean humanitarian organisation, conducted 204 refugee interviews to get a picture of the food situation in North Korea, the movement said in Washington.
The results show a "heartbreaking" picture of families forced to sell all their furniture to buy food or wander the countryside looking for something to eat, said Pomnyun, a Buddhist monk who heads the South Korean aid group.
A 28-year-old mother told interviewers: "When I lost my daughter because of malnutrition, I lost my will to live and tried to commit suicide several times. "Then finally I decided to escape."
North Korea has reported sharp food shortages following massive floods in 1995 and 1996. "We collected plants, herbs and tree bark and boiled it with a spoonful of corn powder," one 67-year-old man said.
"Finally, we had our children find their own meals on the street. "One is dead from starvation, and the other two were murdered and eaten by a neighbour," he said.
Two of the North Korean refugees admitted eating dead bodies to survive, said Young Chun, senior policy adviser of the Korean American Sharing Movement.
The accounts of cannibalism could not be independently confirmed.
The South China Morning Post revealed claims of cannibalism earlier this year. Mr Chun, a sociologist and survey research methodologist, cautioned against generalising from the results of the survey. But he said it did provide witness accounts of the effects of the famine from a large number of survivors.
The 204 refugees gave information on 1,009 family members, including themselves. Of that total, they reported that 245 family members, or 24 per cent, had died in the past two years. The refugees said starvation was the cause of death in 63 per cent of cases.
Diseases such as tuberculosis had also taken a substantial toll, they said.
Starvation accounted for 90 per cent of the deaths among children up to the age of nine, the largest percentage for any group.
At least 43 per cent of the reported deaths were among family members aged 50 or older. That could reflect the giving of food to their children by elderly North Koreans, Mr Chun said.
Altogether, 69 per cent of the refugees said they had lost one or more parents in the past two years, and 25 per cent said they had lost one or more children.
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