It seems that the North Korean people are so food-deprived they are turning to cannibalism for nourishment. Not that eating each other goes unpunished. According to 230 North Korean defectors, cannibals are summarily executed for selling or eating human flesh, and it's been going on since 2006, and possibly as far back as 1999. Although these are all allegations by people who have escaped from the uber-secretive North Korea, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
A state-run South Korean think tank- Korean Institute for National Unification- has compiled a report of allegations from those defectors who claim they witnessed the public executions. That report, in turn, was then reviewed by Yonhap News Agency.
Authorities executed one man for killing and eating parts of a co-worker then trying to sell the rest at a market as mutton.
Widespread food shortages forced another to kill and eat a girl three years ago in Hyesan, Yonhap reported.
A third incident of cannibalism was reported in 2011, but researchers were unable to uncover more details.
Yonhap could not verify the allegations because of strict clampdowns on information coming from the North Korea, according to Global Post.
The internationally isolated country has long battled food shortages, especially after an attempt to reform its currency in 2009.
A North Korean official who defected in 2001 said about a dozen incidents of cannibalism surfaced in that country as far back as 1999.
The allegations of cannibalism followed a huge famine in the late 1990s killed two million people.
Renewed reports of cannibalism come after another human rights group accused North Korea of operating a system of secret gulag-style prison camps, The Associated Press reported.
As many as 200,000 political prisoners occupy the camps, said the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea based in Washington, DC.
Based on satellite imagery and interviews with escapees and former guards, the committee said entire families are sometimes imprisoned for the political crimes of one person.
North Korea, naturally, denies that the gulag exists.
Ironically, while the North Korean people starve, and some turn to eating their office-mates, the leadership does pretty well. Dead "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il, used to airlift Big-Macs from China, had 10,000 bottles of liquor in his cellar, and regularly pigged-out on lobster (and caviar) with silver chopsticks, to boot. He's also said to have amassed 4 billion dollars which he kept in Luxembourg banks. That's why he constantly ranked high in Parade's Worst Dictator lists for so many years, and hit the number 1 spot last year, right before he croaked.
How's that communism working out for the North Korean people?
No comments:
Post a Comment