I ran across this article on the Free Republic Web site. It is a series of interviews with escapees from North Korea reporting the outbreak of widespread human cannibalism. I don't know the credibility of the english language Japanese source, but it looks good and makes for chilling reading.
This passage hit me square between the eyes....
Witness B:If the story in the article is true, the break-up of North Korea is not far off.A 54-year-old North Korean refugee named Lee who escaped from his country with his granddaughter said, "My two grandsons, ages 11 and 8, were sacrificed for the survival of other North Koreans,
"On the day I discovered that my grandsons were missing, I visited other houses searching, but I could not find them. I asked my grandsons'friends where they were. They said that my grandsons disappeared near the black market."
The next day, Mr. Lee visited the black market. He met the parents of his grandsons' friends who were missing as well. They too were searching for their sons. They told Mr. Lee that their sons disappeared at a noodle restaurant near the black market.
Mr. Lee reported the problem to the police department. The police raided the noodle restaurant and found human hands and feet in a pot of kimchi, Korean pickles. Police also found human bones in a garbage pit in the backyard.
The female owner of the noodle restaurant confessed that she had served noodle to the children and had invited them to stand by a stove to get warm. When they fell asleep, she killed them with an axe.
The murderers were shot in public.
The corruption in North Korean life is such that roving bands of Army soldiers are stealing the peasents blind. And they are only the bottom of the kleptocracy as I talked about in "North Korea's Tony Sopranos" and Tom Holsinger mentioned over on Strategypage.com in his "Gangster Confederacy" column. Japan's Weekly Post goes on to say:
"The Kim regime appears to be on the verge of collapse."The "He," of course, is 'Supreme Commander-in-Chief Kim Jong Il.'
"Mr. Kato, a military analyst said, "Each division is financially independent. It has to acquire all of its own equipment, fuel, foods, shoes, uniforms and blankets for their soldiers. The Trading Section of the Logistic Bureau of each division is responsible for financing and distributing these supplies. The Trading Section has enormous power. It has many interests with suppliers including foreign trading firms. Therefore, the Trading Section staff commit fraud in managing foreign currencies or dealing with foreign trading companies, "Those who lose power struggles escape to China before they are sent to concentration camps."According to one Chinese trading businessman in the NKAF report, several North Korean commanders were sent to China in order to purchase military supplies. A Chinese trading firm invited them to dinner. After alchohol had loosened their lips, they said, "That man is filling his own pockets, but soldiers are starving. He is so involved with women that he doesn't event think of getting comfortable shoes for his soldiers,
"He is ignoring soldiers who are dying from starvation. He doesn't care."
God help the South Koreans when the North Falls. They are going to have millions of "Donner Party" survivors on their hands.
This isn't unheard of, and is almost to be expected in starvation situations. Widespread, credible reports of this practice in Mao's China finally surfaced during the 1990s, a byproduct of both the famines and the fanaticism that accompanied his "Great Leap Forward." There are similar reports from the Ukranian famines that Stalin perpetrated.
Given the deliberately callous policies adopted by South Korea with respect to North Korean refugees, I must say that I won't feel a bit sorry for them if their eventual reunification process is a generation-long national hell.
I renew my prediction that, barring a sudden failure of will in Washington, by New Year's Day the Kim Jong Il regime will be only a bad memory.
It's tragic that we have to topple a tyrannical government in this fashion. Had we acted before the North Koreans could credibly claim to have nuclear weapons, this could have been avoided. As matters stand, it's the best solution available, even though millions will suffer horribly before the denouement.
Francis:
I don't think NK possession of nukes made much of a change- the deciding factor was the proximity of Seoul to the DMZ meant that any war, unless started by the US with nukes dropped on NK artillery emplacements, would have killed millions and crippled SK's economy
However, I would not bet against you.
Joe:
Did SK have much choice in the matter? How many times did NK attempt to infiltrate sabateuers (sp?) into the South?
Trent,
I linked over from "Gweilo Diaries"
The disregard for societal mores and taboos indicative of a severe breakdown in North Korean society, because of the dire deprivation.
The North Korean people may become stigmatized by the South Koreans.
After the collapse of Kim Jong il's regime, who will fill the power vacuum? What will happen to the North Korean's standing army? Will it become factionalized and pillage the countryside? Will these smaller armed former military groups be subject to the whims of a new class of "Korean warlords"?
North and South Korean reunification may prove to be a situation rife with prejudice, conflicts and possibly even violence.
Think China will then, intervene and annex the Korean peninsula "for the good of the Korean people"?
I don't know...
Tricia