[url]http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/08/wkor08.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/08/ixworld.html[/url]


Famine-struck N Koreans 'eating children'
By Mark Nicol
(Filed: 08/06/2003)


Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."

The NKRAF, an aid body set up in China five years ago which helps to smuggle food and medicines into parts of North Korea off-limits to WFP officials, interviewed 200 refugees for the report.

"If a funeral takes place during the day and the burial is performed that evening, the grave may be dug open and the body stolen before morning," said one refugee.

Another witness, named only as Lee, 54, said he feared that his missing grandsons, aged eight and 11, had been killed for food. As he searched widely for them, they boys' friends said they had vanished near a market.

Mr Lee said police who raided a nearby restaurant found body parts. The business's owners were shot.

Gerald Bourke, the WFP's representative in Beijing, said it was difficult for his organisation to substantiate the reports of cannibalism as they were unable to get to the markets. "As in any desperately poor country, it is something we might stumble on," he said. "It's not just a problem for us, but also our donors." Because of the food shortages, many people were having to survive on nine ounces of rations a day - less than half the recommended minimum daily intake.

North Korea's ability to feed itself has been hit by floods, deforestation and lack of farm fertilisers and equipment.

The WFP says Japan provided 500,000 tons of food aid in 2001, making it the biggest donor, but sent nothing last year. Food aid from America has been cut from 340,000 tons in 2001 to 40,000 tons so far this year. Washington has pledged to send a further 60,000 tons if Pyongyang lifts restrictions on the operations of agencies such as the WFP.

Yes, yes it is time.

 Man, that is just awful.  Most of us Americans can't even begin to imagine what it is like over there in one of the world's last communist strongholds.  

 If North Korea wouldn't spend so much money on their military (i.e., looking for better ways to destroy the USA), not only would they be able to feed their populace, but the US and other Western nations would be willing to send more aid there way.  As it stands right now, NK is on a completely self destructive course, and may one day soon try to take South Korea down with them.  

... I find this story hard to believe

Not that you need any *more* reasons to hate N. Korea, but is there any substantiation of this rumor?  

Now that you mention it. I havent heard if there is a shortage of dogs in North Korea.....

I have been looking myself, if you look bacl in history there have been many examples of Cannibalism and most were kept hush hush or talked about very little if at all.
If you search the Siege of Leningrad it lasted almost 900 days, it had some of the worst cannibalism in history from what I read.

Now if you know there's no food and you know that X amount of people need X amount of food to survive then what were or are they eating?

[url]http://www.urbanlegends.com/death/pow_cannibalism.html[/url]

I see you, and raise you one:

[url]http://www.snopes.com/horrors/cannibal/fetus.htm [/url]

Kimchee kills the taste.

LOL! Their eating their children. So Lets nuke them!

[:D]

If the people refuse to throw off the yoke of oppression, let them eat cake...

To HELL with them.

The famine and starvation are for real whether or not the cannibalism is.  And I read somewhere that Kim Jong Il spends $600,000 to $700,000 a year on his favorite brandy.  I'd say all we have to do is impose an international brandy embargo on NK. [rolleyes]

I thought Kim Il was a cognac addict (fitting, a french drink for the SOB).

Folks, they're starving. Folks in desperate situations do desperate things - recall the Donner party or the rugby team that crashed in the Andes. If it's a choice between eating a corpse or dying, you can't blame them for making the former. Of course, in every society there will be those fringe, amoral f**ks who will go ahead and kill others to prolong their own worthless lives.

This may be a case where the people have truly been so starved over the last half century that they can't fight back. The minimum height accepted for their armed forces has shrunk by a foot in the last few decades. Just imagine what that implies about the general population. If there ever were a case for a humanitarian invasion, this would be it.

Brandy, cognac, whatever.  All I knew was it wasn't Bud Lite. [:D]

Belive it, this has been reported before by different news agencies, it is happening.

[b]Violent Pacification[/b] - Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, 1984

We'll force you
To be nice
To each other
Kill you
Before you
Kill Each other
Violent Pacification

One of my all time favorite songs [:D]

Holy crap! I havent heard DRI in years!

[b]"It really is time to Nuke N. Korea!"[/b]

What I meant by this was the military dictatorship in N. Korea, not the innocent civies, collateral damage ? Sure but they would be free (even if they are dead) [:D]

Absolutely!

We need to help introduce a medieval, feudal style system of local/regional warlords into the country, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.  That'll work!

[;D]

Kill them all and let God sort them out!!!!

i say let them rise up themselves if they are tired of starving

Damn, I wish I could remember where I read the story. Can't remember the link. But, the article referenced the remains of a North Korean missile that had been found in Alaska. The warhead consisted of a telemetry package...nothing lethal, just recording and transmitting electronics. The article said that the State Dept. was keeping the story under wraps as to not get the American public in an uproar. The link, if I remember right, was a UK newspaper. NO, it wasn't the Sun or Globe!

Food for thought. Just why are we moving our troops farther south away from the DMZ? Is it REALLY because we just wanna get them out of the range of North Korean artillery or the stand-off range for our smallest strategic nuclear weapon requires the distance [stick].

It's time to lay some smack down on that pajama wearing psycho!

If you're about to dump something heavy on an enemy, it's good to give your troops time and incentive to back the hell up for their own safety.

The big problem with N.K. is that there are only a very few people who are so rabidly pro-Communist and so paranoid of America and other countries, but those people are the ones in charge.

If you took out the leadership completely, the rest of the North Koreans would toss communism into the fires as quickly as you can imagine.

The North Korea situation is heating up to near critical.  I fear that it will get only hotter before a resolution is achieved, and I really think that shots will be exchanged.   Will any be nuclear?  I don't know, but the outcome of such an exchange is unquestionably a foregone conclusion, and the North Korean leadership has to know that their first use of nukes against anyone will be their LAST act before death.

They HAVE to know that.

CJ

DRI - Thrashhard ..... cool

Good thing soilent green isn`t made of people.

Pass the Tobasco