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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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 Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 3:58 am Post subject: Its a holiday in Cambodia! |
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TOKYO, Wednesday, June 1 - To combat growing food shortages, the North Korean government is sending millions of city dwellers to work on farms each weekend, largely to transplant rice, according to foreign aid workers.
"The staff that work for us, the staff that work in the ministries, are going out to help farmers," said Richard Ragan, director of World Food Program operations in Pyongyang, referring to North Koreans who work for the program. Speaking by telephone on Wednesday, he said that in terms of food supplies North Koreans "are inching back to the precipice."
"It does happen every year," he said of the mobilization of workers to the fields, "but the difference this year is that everyone is involved."
Gerald Bourke, a World Food Program spokesman, said Wednesday that on a recent visit to the port of Wonsan, "We saw thousands of people who were marching out of the city."
"Later, we saw them digging out irrigation canals," he said, speaking by telephone from Beijing.
A decade ago, up to two million North Koreans starved to death in one of the rare peacetime famines of modern history. The famine was caused by a cutoff in Soviet aid, a collapse of North Korea's industrial economy, and the reluctance of a highly xenophobic government to receive foreign aid.
Now, with worldwide opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, foreign food aid is drying up.
"At end of June, I cut 2.5 million people off from their food rations," said Mr. Ragan, an American, referring to a group equal to 10 percent of North Korea's population. Unless new food comes quickly from the outside, the number of North Koreans receiving foreign food aid will plunge to 1.5 million in August, from 6.5 million people this spring.
The World Food Program, the largest foreign food supplier to North Korea, has received only 6 percent of the 230,000 tons it needs this year, Anthony Banbury, Asia director for the United Nations agency, told a news conference in Seoul last Friday, according to Reuters.
Referring to government rations, he said, "What the government is able to provide the people now, these 250 grams a day, is a starvation ration."
About 70 percent of North Korea's population lives in cities, where the collapse of a state food distribution system and partial free market reforms have forced them to buy food at market prices.
Since August 2003, the market prices of rice and corn have increased fivefold, hitting 750 won per kilo of rice on Wednesday.
North Korean monthly salaries, which have not changed during that time, average about 2,400 won. The official exchange rate is 140 won to the dollar. The unofficial rate is 2,550 won to the dollar.
Residents of smaller cities increasingly farm plots of marginal land on nearby hillsides. Only 18 percent of North Korea is considered suitable for farming.
On April 11, the annual meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly approved two major policies for the year: increasing national defense against the United States and improving farm production.
"Agriculture is the main front in the socialist economic construction this year," Premier Pak Pong Ju said in a speech to the assembly, a rubber-stamp group that routinely approves legislation within a few hours, without debate.
The state will spend "29 percent more funds than the previous year on agriculture so that all efforts of the country can be directed to decisively solve the people's food problem," said the North Korean finance minister, Mun Il Bong. According to the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, "appeared on the platform" at the assembly meeting.
The weekend mass mobilizations appear to be intended to help farms where machinery no longer works due to lack of parts or fuel.
North Korea's economy has contracted by nearly 20 percent since 1990, when consumer prices are taken into account, according to a report released Tuesday by The Bank of Korea. The bank, a South Korean government institution, estimated that, in constant terms, North Korea's economy grew by 2.2 percent in 2004, and 1.8 percent in 2003.
Foreign aid workers predict a summer of severe food shortages for North Korea's urban dwellers.
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Hwajangsil Ajumma
Joined: 02 May 2005
Location: On my knees in the stall
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 4:02 am Post subject: |
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| Pah! I was hoping to read a story about the Dead Kennedys making a comeback. No such luck. |
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jaganath69
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| Hwajangsil Ajumma wrote: |
| Pah! I was hoping to read a story about the Dead Kennedys making a comeback. No such luck. |
they have, albeit without Jello Biafra. Other members sued for royalties and then got some d1ckweed named Brandon Cruz to front them. They are still touring under the moniker "DK Kennedys"
http://www.deadkennedys.com/ |
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meagicano
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 8:53 am Post subject: |
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they have, albeit without Jello Biafra. Other members sued for royalties and then got some d1ckweed named Brandon Cruz to front them. They are still touring under the moniker "DK Kennedys"
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Therefore, they haven't.
I've been in a Dead Kennedy's mood for the past two weeks. It's driving my Christian, K-pop loving roommate up the wall. Of course, there is equal opportunity for her K-pop crap to be played, so we both suffer. |
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