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http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?num=12093&cataId=nk00100 (http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?num=12093&cataId=nk00100)

The best news from there are from escapes to sud Korea, that is about 4000 people every Year.

Listen something from Andrei Lankov. http://tttkkk.livejournal.com/

Definitely, I've seen and read a lot of stuff by Professor Lankov over the years in addition to the many documentaries and reports by defectors. The lives they have led and the shear terror they went through both inside their home country and the journey away from it is hard to comprehend but you have to respect them for it even if they wouldn't want a piece of what I call a libertarian paradise, unless they learned otherwise of course.

NK people are malnourished by a plethora of intentional design of the NK regime. Here's just one reason NK people suffer maltrition and the means the NK regime assures they suffer: The NK regime mobilizes laborers and college-brats to destroy crops!

That may be the case but I know that they clear cut a lot of their former forests and now have flooding problems every year

Interestingly, North Korea was actually considered the more successful country of the two and was richer than the capitalist South until around the 1970's. I wonder what went wrong.

nothing really went wrong, it is that their leaders have tried successfully to keep very tight control over their citizens and making sure that families cannot stockpile food is one way of doing this

When the lynchpin of one's society is foisting loyalty on the people at the behest of the dictator's family, it is doomed to go in this direction. Priority #1 becomes the only thing that matters and everything else takes a back seat. Central planning has always been a bust and that's why their economy is in its current shape and an entire generation of people by and large are small, malnourished and similarly under-weight.

Lots of fat pigs at the top while the rest of the population is suffering.

People who advocate central planning should spend some time in North Korea.

Just 4,000 people a year? Compare that to the annual population growth of 125,000 or so. The population of DPR Korea is increasing, despite some people managing to flee the country.

Only 4,000 is lucky and brave enough to escape. Considering the how hard to escape North Korea. The others simply got killed and also their family got killed on the process.

4,000 is the number of DPR Koreans who are escaping to South Korea every year. The more popular option is migration to North-east China. Millions of North Koreans are working in China, and their numbers are climbing every year.

South Korea would have benefited from the North Korean immigration. The population is declining because of low birth rate. They are not interested in third world migration and are trying hard to attract ethnic Korean migrants from all over the world (especially from the former USSR, where there are more than 600,000 ethnic Koreans).

What benefit south Korea offer ethnic Korean back to their homeland?

But at least they have made it to the group stage of the world cup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJoRZOK18Fg

Yes , I know it's fake.

Not much. But it is easier for ethnic Koreans to get a South Korean work visa (which is notoriously hard to obtain, especially for the blue collar jobs). And most of the Soviet Koreans are concentrated in countries such as Uzbekistan, where the wages are abysmally low. An ethnic Korean from Uzbekistan can earn as much money in a month, which he would otherwise earn from 3 years working in Uzbekistan.

No. The way is first to China, and after to Sud Korea.
Border from DPRK to China is very easy to cross passing illegally.

The most problem are money for the way in China and hard social adaptation in Sud Korea. Some people turn back to North Korea.
North Koreans prefer to stay in China for more work places and similar social conditions.

This is very sad that the people of North Korea have to resort to risking their family's lives to try to escape like this.

Really not surprising at all. I'm more surprised that the NK regime has managed to keep the people suppressed for this long. They're going to fall apart some time in the near future, and it is NOT going to be pretty when it happens.

Governments generally stay in power, for as long as they can. If they have to kill their own citizens to stay in power, they will do it. No matter if it's the government of North Korea or the US government. That said, the living situation in NK is very bad, and it is no surprise that the bottom and middle layer are trying to escape. Of course the top layer in NK has a very good life, with luxury hotel, lots of food etc.

It used to be that if you fucked up in that country your entire extended family was swooped up and taken to labor or prison camps so there was this underline of terror in the back of peoples' minds. I can't imagine being dealt w/ so severely if one of my cousins got in trouble. And, it could be an infraction so small to us as in mishandling of the leader's picture in one's home or forgetting to wear the lapel pin when out in public. Then poof, your whole family gets rounded up. It's not fun to go into state prisons here in America cause there's lots of gangsters in there. Over there, they work you in awful conditions from dawn til dusk and feed you the equivalent of one normal small meal that most people eat in their daily lives, all day long. Since the offenses are against the state and the main family, offenders and associates in these prisons are treated as animals and beaten as such. Currently, there's around 200k+ offenders and political prisoners in gulags over there so it's beyond obvious that times are tough for the vast majority over there, as no one in their right mind would chance escaping or smuggling w/ the kind of penalties that one faces. When defecting, one small slip up or unfortunate situation can get one caught by border agents, undercover spies in China or agents of any of the countries people have to go through to make it to Thailand and turn themselves in to the embassy where they're processed and eventually sent to the South, the UK and very few choose the US.

Well the most recent photos show that Koreans are eating better.  I've even seen photos of fat infantrymen.

The Korean starvation is no different than the Cuban near starvation - the USSR was done in the early 1990s and both North Korea and Cuba were left isolated in the global trading network and it took them time to adjust.  The results would had been no different if European countries decided to go Autarky in the early 1990s.

Technically speaking very few countries in the world are food independent and must import to make up the gap.  In Europe, if I recall, France is the only country which is self-sufficient in food production and the rest have to import their food from North and South America.

When I was in Europe, they imported the food from other countries within Europe, including France. Europe is not as large as the US, so it is not such a big problem.

Nice.

If I am a Korean in Uzbekistan, I would seriously considering moving back to South Korea.

All governments use food to stay in power and try to produce harmless citizens. First world countries do that by incentiving unbalanced diets and with toxics hormones and pesticides in food and meat, while North Korea use the famine to keep the citizens unable to do organize, and as incentive for delations and stuff.


Nothing new.

Almost all of these Koreans were born in Uzbekistan. They no longer speak the Korean language. Also, some are inter-married to the natives. Not many would chose to settle down in South Korea permanently.

I see.

My observation is parents will do whatever they can to make their children future better. Moving to a country with open arm may prove profitable.

All the photos you see are made to make their country look better than it really is. They are not going to show pictures of the starvation because they want the world to believe that they are self sufficient.

Yep, clearly these apparent photos were part of the propaganda onslaught that the DPRK is known for. Most if not all of the news I here and see out of the North is that the military personnel are leaving their posts and stealing food from the locals and most of these military aged people were stunted from the so-called arduous march. It's only the prosperous that are lucky enough to live in Pyongyang, via proper familial backgrounds, that lead normal and healthy lives.

Yes, I agree with this.
In fact, I have a few friends from S. Korea and they also don't believe this false reports from N. Korea.
N. Korea have very long tradition of false reports and manipulating own people by media and brainwashing them.
This became almost art there, so i will not trust any positive report from N. Korea.