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DPRK

North Korea Today No. 112 Feb 2008

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How Many Farm Workers Will Survive This Year?

Food has run out already in some collective farms in North Hamgyung Province. A three-member family unit received 500kg of foodstuffs for the year, if they did really well. However, after paying back for the corn borrowed during the summer and contributing their share of pork to the People's Army among other contributions, some families paid 530kg worth of foodstuff, which is more than what they received. Therefore, some families are starting to borrow corn again starting in January just to survive. North Korean authorities say that 20% of the families have run out of food currently. They predict that 40% of households will be out of food by the end of March. Because of a rumor that food will be even scarcer in the coming months, it has become even more difficult to borrow food. The farm workers who are out of food now are surviving daily by eating the leftovers they gleaned from the harvested fields. One old man confided that he is only waiting to die, saying that "I feel guilty to my family for living into my 70's." Other farm workers also agree that it's more difficult to live day by day instead of dying and being done with it. They don't think that better days are coming anytime soon. They say with a collective voice that the promise of a better life has become a sad joke, an outdated mantra from yester years. "How many farm workers will survive this year?" they ask plaintively. The female farm workers all say, "We must survive this year but we don't know how to keep our husbands and children alive."

Wives Battle to Keep the Families Alive in Farms

The wives in the farm are shedding bloody tears trying to keep their families alive. Last year, the wives did everything to put their husbands' welfare ahead of theirs on the thought that a family cannot hold together without the head of the household and that children should not grow up without a father. However, the lack of food often took a toll of the nerves of the family members, resulting in a lot of fights with the wives often beaten by the husbands. Even this winter, it's common to see women without even a pair of cottonfilled shoes roaming out in the barren fields looking for leftover grains to glean and carry it back to their children. Things are so bad that they can't even eat a bowl of rice on the lunar New Year, the biggest holiday of the year. Many women cried when they couldn't afford to feed their families this past lunar New Year. They are only hoping that their husband's or children's birthdays won't come up soon since they can't afford to celebrate it in any way. "Even during the Arduous March we didn't suffer across the board like this," one woman cried.

People Pay Back 1.7 Times of What They Borrowed From the Government

Last May, many farm workers were too hungry to go out and work during the rice planting season. They could barely drag their bodies. Therefore, the authorities lent ears of corn (the 'No.2 Rice'2) for them to eat and recover their strength so that they could plant the rice. The terms were that the borrowing households - receiving from 50~80kg each - would pay back 1.7 times the amount of food they borrowed when the harvest season rolled around in the fall. Those households that borrowed the corn ears all paid back the authorities without fail according to the terms.