A Second "Arduous March"?

Dr. Andrei Lankov has an article up on Asia Times about the prospects of another major famine in North Korea.

Among the North Korean population there is widespread talk about a "second Arduous March" (the "Arouse [sic] March" being a somewhat pompous official name for the "Great Famine" which killed between 500,000 and 1 million people between 1996-1999). International experts seem to agree. Tony Banbury, the World Food Program (WFP) regional director for Asia, said in mid-April: "The food security situation in the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is clearly bad and getting worse. It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy."

This change of mood is dramatic. Merely a year ago, North Korean leaders were optimistic. The good harvest of 2005 persuaded them that food shortages were behind them, and that North Korean agriculture had begun to recover. The 2005 harvest was merely 4.6 million tons, well below the 5.2 million tons which are necessary to keep the entire population alive. Still, it was clearly an improvement.

It's looking more and more like a perfect storm of rising food prices, posturing against the new South Korean administration, and a poor harvest could lead to a very bad next few years in North Korea.

Read the whole article for more info. It's a little long, but well worth the read.

Day 2 of Fast for NK Week

We'll once again be out on Sproul today. Come and stop by our table if you haven't already!

In the meantime, please read up on your North Korea facts. Today, check out this link right here. It's a collection of articles on human trafficking in and around North Korea.

And if you have any questions for us, our email address is linkbayarea@gmail.com.

Fast for NK Week

Starting in a little less than 9 hours, LiNK Outreach: Bay Area (LOBA) will be bringing Fast for NK back to the UC Berkeley campus.

Fast for NK was started last year by LiNK Global as a way of bringing attention to the humanitarian crisis in and around North Korea. On April 11, 2007 thousands of people worldwide abstained from eating, in solidarity with starving North Koreans, and donated the money they would have spent on food toward LiNK's shelters.

This year, we'll be doing the fast again at Berkeley, on April 25th. Throughout the week, LOBA will be on Sproul, tabling, flyering, and sharing with our fellow students about the crisis. In addition, many of LOBA's staff are going above and beyond simply fasting on one day by eating only one cup of rice a day - about what an average North Korean gets in rations - for the first four days of the week.



Last year, 118 people on the Berkeley campus fasted, raising over $800 to support shelters and food aid for North Korean refugees. Will you join us this year?



If you're not in the area, you can still help out! Please use this opportunity to spread the word about the North Korean human rights crisis. If you want more information about LiNK, please visit LiNK Global's web site - and if you'd like to make a donation, you'll find a "donate" button on the left side of the screen. All money LiNK raises goes directly to helping North Korean refugees.

We'll be keeping this blog updated throughout the week with information about what's going on in North Korea. Stay tuned!

Olympics Activism on Behalf of NK Refugees

Controversy is mounting over the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing; here in the Bay Area, we've seen lots of protests over China's human rights record, particularly by advocates for Tibet and for Darfur. Less active, or at least less visible, have been advocates for North Koreans. In Seoul, however, a group is trying to bring attention to the issue.

Onlookers watch as a man tied up in ropes is led down a crowded pedestrian street by a woman holding a plastic assault rifle. Another man holding a megaphone explains that the re-enactment depicts a scene that has become an everyday occurrence in China. A multinational coalition of activists, calling themselves the 4-4-4 Campaign, holds this demonstration each weekend in downtown Seoul.

In Chinese culture, the number 4 symbolizes death. Protester Nam Hyang Soo says the activists chose their name because Beijing's refugee policy is killing North Koreans who try to escape their impoverished homeland.

[...]

For the past few weeks, attention has been focused on the Chinese crackdown on protesters in Tibet. The 4-4-4 Campaign wants the world to remember that Tibetans aren't the only people whose human rights are regularly violated by Beijing. They too are calling for an international boycott of the Olympic Games, and have threatened to disrupt the opening ceremonies in the Chinese capital in August.

More pictures from North Korea

From a courageous reporter for The Sun, who goes into some detail about the treatment he received after being caught taking the pictures.

SKorea to back UN resolution on NKorea

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

South Korea will vote in favor of a U.N. resolution on alleged human rights violations in North Korea, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

The resolution is expected to raise concerns about the rights situation in North Korea — which international advocacy groups say is among the world's worst abusers. Voting for it would make good on the new Seoul government's promise not to refrain from criticizing Pyongyang.

The official spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because he did not want to comment publicly before the vote, scheduled later this week at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The new government of conservative President Lee Myung-bak has promised a change from the reluctance of previous South Korean liberal governments to publicly criticize the North.

Since 2003, South Korea has only once voted for a U.N. resolution on human rights in its communist, impoverished and isolated neighbor — after the North's nuclear test in October 2006.

In other votes, the South either abstained or stayed away out of concerns that its criticism might hurt ties and efforts to resolve the international nuclear standoff with North Korea.

From: Yahoo!

Major food shortage in NK this year

From Yahoo!:

A dire food shortage across North Korea has become so acute it has started to affect the country's elite in the capital, Pyongyang, reports say.
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Aid agency Good Friends says food rations for some parts of the city have been cut by up to 60%, while others have seen their supplies cut off completely.

Only citizens who show absolute loyalty to leader Kim Jong Il and his regime are allowed to live in Pyongyang and are considered better off than their fellow countrymen.

But the food situation, which has mostly been felt in rural areas where rations have been suspended since November, has now spread to the city, according to the South Korean aid agency.

"Even ranking officials have run out of their (rationed) food supply, while a ban on (private) trade is strictly maintained," said an unidentified city official quoted by Good Friends.

"It is nothing but a death sentence."

The agency also said farm labourers were staying away from work because they were not getting any food. This was said to be affecting the planting of new crops.

The fact that this is affecting the elite in Pyongyang is unprecedented, and leads to a possible silver lining to this very dark cloud. From One Free Korea:

The regime has contained and survived mass-casualty famine and dissent in the countryside before. A severe downturn in Pyongyang, however, is a game-changer. If the regime can’t even feed its elite, it’s going to have to take some chairs away from the banquet table. That means commissars and apparatchiks will shiv each other for the remaining chairs as though their lives depend on it. A rumored phase-out of the “military first” policy introduces a whole new pool of potential coup plotters. This could be the beginning of the end. If the report is true – and if China doesn’t execute an Olympic-sized airlift to reverse those conditions fast – there’s a 70% chance of regime collapse within the next year.