Starving In Paradise

Read about Hyok Kang, a North Korean who grew up during the great famine of the 1990s.

International food aid began to arrive in Onsong, our city, near the border with China. For a while the children started to get their strength back. But then the cadres reduced the rations. First the children had to make do with soup, then with nothing. Their faces were terribly thin, their cheeks were hollow and their eyes bulged with hunger.

The United Nations must have heard that the aid was not being distributed, because an inspection was organised. The party cadres, who had been alerted in advance, had rice delivered to the schools from state storehouses, which were apparently far from empty. The children were told to tell the UN inspectors that this diet was perfectly normal. On the day of the visit there were all kinds of dishes on the menu: noodles, maize soufflé. Once the UN team set off again, the cadres took back everything, including all the uneaten food from the tables where the children were still sitting.

Hunger engulfed my little universe. The poorest children lived on nothing but grass, and during class their stomachs rumbled. After a few weeks their faces began to swell, making them look well nourished. Then their faces went on growing until they looked as though they had been inflated. Their cheeks were so puffy that they couldn’t see the blackboard. Some of them were covered with impetigo and flaking skin.

My classmates started dying during the summer of 1996. One girl spent her days by her dying brother’s bedside, going short herself so that he would have more to eat. She died before he did.

Now ask yourself why we're trying to appease that nasty little gargoyle who holds North Korea in a death grip.

Dear God in heaven, how blessed are we here in America and we don't even realize it. Shame on us. One day we'll have to answer for our failure to do more to rid the world of evil men like Kim Jong-Il, and we will deserve every ounce of judgement handed to us.

ht: Conservative Propaganda