North Koreans are battling famine while the Hermit Kingdom continues to isolate itself from the remainder of the world.
Three inhabitants of a totalitarian state secretly communicated with the BBC for months, detailing the horrors of watching their neighbors starve to death as they struggle to survive what may end up to be a good worse famine crisis than the Nineteen Nineties North Korean famine that killed three million people.
“At first I used to be afraid I used to be going to die of Covid,” said one construction employee, “but then I began worrying I used to be going to starve to death.”
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Pyongyang took steps to seal its borders with Russia and China by constructing lots of of kilometers of fences along its borders.
Reportedly, authorities have also ordered guards to shoot anyone who tries to cross its borders.
Nevertheless, the containment measures cut off various pipelines to feed North Korea’s 26 million residents, including halting grain imports from China, together with fertilizers and machinery essential to grow food.
The country still lacks enough food to feed its residents, but the specter of death for those crossing the border has meanwhile hampered smugglers’ efforts to smuggle food out of China, which is sold in unsanctioned markets where many North Koreans buy groceries.
One trader told the BBC three-quarters of its supplies will come from China, but stalls in its local market are “now empty” for the reason that pandemic. These days, people have been knocking on her door asking for something to eat.
In his village near the Chinese border, a construction employee said five people starved to death due to lack of food.
And a girl living within the country’s capital, Pyongyang, revealed that a family of three was found dead of starvation of their home.
“We knocked on their door to give them water but nobody answered,” the girl said, adding that authorities who entered the home found the family dead.
North Korea’s authoritarian leader Kim Jon Un even publicly addressed the “food shortage” plaguing the nation and he promissed to increase the production of grain and other agricultural production.
But that hasn’t stopped Pyongyang from committing, by some estimates, greater than $500 million to test 63 ballistic missiles last yr as a part of its country’s nuclear arms program – enough to cover North Korea’s annual grain shortage.
Experts say the incontrovertible fact that even middle-class residents are experiencing famine of their neighborhoods is a really worrying sign.
“We’re not talking about full-scale social collapse and mass starvation yet, nevertheless it doesn’t look good,” North Korean economist Peter Ward told the BBC.
For a lot of North Koreans, the past three years have shaken their loyalty to their country’s leader.
“Before Covid, people viewed Kim Jong Un positively,” Myong Suk said. “Now almost everyone is filled with dissatisfaction.”