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It's a shame the ruling class and the military live like kings while the people are starving. It's so bad in the winter time that people survive by eating grass and fight over the rats and birds.Betcha ol Kimmy boy and his cronys wont suffer.........
North Koreans have been ordered to collect POO to help the country's agricultural sector. Survivors of the dictatorship's brutal regime say leader Kim Jong Un and other authorities are demanding human feces to help farms in the country to continue delivering crops. It had previously relied on neighbour South Korea for fertiliser, but it imposed an embargo in 2010 after the North sank one of its ships. It did send some supplies last year but relations are deteriorating once again.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has demanded North Koreans provide human waste as fertiliser
According to The Star Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea in 2007, wrote of her experience of how families were forced to collect animal and human feces to make up the shortfall. She said: "The government came up with a campaign to fill the fertiliser gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste. "Every worker and every school had a quota to fill. You can imagine what kind of problems this created for our families. "Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war. My aunts were the most competitive."
Dictator Kim Jong Un had previously relied on South Korea for fertilizer
She wrote how her family became competitive about how much they could produce and Canada’s National Post reported that shops even began selling it in 2010. Writing in her memoir In Order To Live, Ms Park added: "Our bathrooms in North Korea were unusually far away from the house, so you had to be careful that the neighbours didn’t steal from you at night. "Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school the teachers would send us out into the streets to find poop and carry it back to class. "So if we saw a dog pooping in the street, it was like gold. My uncle in Kowon had a big dog who made a big poop – and everyone in the family would fight over it."
Kim Jong Un has demanded something bizarre from North Korean citizens
South Korea's unification ministry said Tuesday that North Korea is short 694,000 tons of food for fiscal year 2016 – which began in November 2015 and ends in October, Yonhap reported. Citing data from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program, the ministry told South Korean lawmakers food demand in North Korea was about 5.5 million tons, but food production only reached 4.8 million tons.
The food shortage is expanding.
In 2014, North Korea's food shortage was estimated to be 340,000 tons and 407,000 tons in 2015. In 2015, North Korea's grain production was hit heavily by a drought. A lack of fertilizer and other resources could have also contributed to the deficit, according to the report. Pyongyang also continues to reduce official rations supplied through its public distribution system. The rations were reduced to 360 grams daily per person, down from 370 grams in the first quarter of 2016, and well below the U.N.-recommended amount of 600 grams daily per person.
But the malnutrition problem hasn't stopped North Korea's elite from affording the best for their children. The unification ministry said North Koreans of economic means are able to afford up to $1,000 in private tutoring for their sons and daughters. "According to defector testimonies, North Koreans [of means] can afford to pay [$30] to [$500] in private education expenses on a monthly basis, and up to $1,000," the ministry statement read. North Korea's food shortage has worsened in areas heavily hit by floods that washed away farmland and forced people out of their homes.
Seoul has mostly declined to reach out to the North with humanitarian assistance, citing continued provocations. But civic groups in South Korea working with overseas Korean organizations have been able to deliver food, including instant noodles and flour to the North, Yonhap reported Tuesday. The food was delivered to northeastern North Korea, but representative of the Korean Sharing Movement did not reveal the means of delivery.
North Korea's food shortage grows but elites remain unaffected, Seoul says
The United Nations and others have long accused the government of blocking or restricting aid delivery in the East African nation. President Salva Kiir's remarks to the transitional national assembly came after the famine was declared in parts of oil-rich Unity state. More than 100,000 people are affected, according to South Sudan's government and U.N. agencies. They say another 1 million people are on the brink of starvation.
South Sudan has repeatedly promised to allow full humanitarian access across the country, but with little effect. Some in Kiir's government have expressed hostility toward the international community, accusing it of meddling in the country's affairs. Human Rights Watch researcher Jonathan Pedneault wrote Tuesday that the famine is a man-made result of "conflict, warring parties blocking access for aid workers and large-scale human rights violations."
The U.S. State Department said it was gravely concerned by the declaration of famine, calling the crisis "the direct consequence of a conflict prolonged by South Sudanese leaders who are unwilling to put aside political ambitions for the good of their people." "We call on President Kiir to expeditiously make good on his promise that humanitarian and developmental organizations will have unimpeded access to populations in need across the country," acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statment.
Also Tuesday, the European Commission announced an 82 million euro ($87 million) emergency aid package for South Sudan, saying this is the first famine declared in the country since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011. "The humanitarian tragedy in South Sudan is entirely man-made," EU Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Commissioner Christos Stylianides said in a statement.
Tens of thousands have died in the civil war that began in December 2013 and has continued despite a peace agreement in 2015. More than 1.5 million people have fled the country. South Sudan also is experiencing severe inflation, which has made food unaffordable for many families.
News from The Associated Press
Stephen O'Brien told the U.N. Security Council that "without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death" and "many more will suffer and die from disease." He urged an immediate injection of funds for Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and northeast Nigeria plus safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid "to avert a catastrophe." "To be precise," O'Brien said, "we need $4.4 billion by July." Without a major infusion of money, he said, children will be stunted by severe malnutrition and won't be able to go to school, gains in economic development will be reversed and "livelihoods, futures and hope will be lost."
U.N. and food organizations define famine as when more than 30 percent of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition and mortality rates are two or more deaths per 10,000 people every day, among other criteria. "Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations," O'Brien said. "Now, more than 20 million people across four countries face starvation and famine." O'Brien said the largest humanitarian crisis is in Yemen where two-thirds of the population - 18.8 million people - need aid and more than seven million people are hungry and don't know where their next meal will come from. "That is three million people more than in January," he said.
The Arab world's poorest nation is engulfed in conflict and O'Brien said more than 48,000 people fled fighting just in the past two months. During his recent visit to Yemen, O'Brien said he met senior leaders of the government and the Shiite Houthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa, and all promised access for aid. "Yet all parties to the conflict are arbitrarily denying sustained humanitarian access and politicize aid," he said, warning if that behavior doesn't change now "they must be held accountable for the inevitable famine, unnecessary deaths and associated amplification in suffering that will follow."
For 2017, O'Brien said $2.1 billion is needed to reach 12 million Yemenis "with life-saving assistance and protection" but only 6 percent has been received so far. He announced that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will chair a pledging conference for Yemen on April 25 in Geneva. The U.N. humanitarian chief also visited South Sudan, the world's newest nation which has been ravaged by a three-year civil war, and said "the situation is worse than it has ever been." "The famine in South Sudan is man-made," he said. "Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine - as are those not intervening to make the violence stop." O'Brien said more than 7.5 million people need aid, up by 1.4 million from last year, and about 3.4 million South Sudanese are displaced by fighting including almost 200,000 who have fled the country since January.
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