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China-Japan-Koreas
Facing chronic shortfalls, North Korea tells citizens to start supplying their own food
2021-07-14
[AmericanMilitaryNews] North Korea
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
 is ordering citizens to start producing their own food to prepare for a long-term food shortage that could last for three years, but ordinary people say that the government is shirking its responsibility, sources in the country told RFA.

RFA reported in April that authorities were warning residents to prepare for economic difficulties as bad as the 1994-1998 famine which killed millions by some estimates, but experts said that the situation was dire, but nothing like the 1990s.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in a recent report that North Korea would be short about 860,000 tons of food this year, about two months of normal demand.
Posted by:trailing wife

#9  Maybe this is a good thing. I have this twisted vision of the future where Pudge becomes the Godfather of North Korea and leads his people into the modern world, sort of like Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore, but more corpulent. Stranger things have happened. Remind yourself that Dennis Rodman is already part of this story.

Side Note: The world owes the NKor people a debt of gratitude for taking part in a grand economic experiment. Experiments on humans have gotten a bad rap (especially since that business with the Soylent Corporation) so it isn't often you can divide them up into groups and do A/B testing.

In this case, we took two identical populations and gave one communism and the other a market economy. South Korean won hands down on pretty much any axis you can think of. Sorry about all the famine and thank you for your participation.
Posted by: SteveS   2021-07-14 20:56  

#8  I thought they always supplied their own grass
Posted by: Chris   2021-07-14 20:31  

#7  Agriculture in the Soviet Union(Wiki): "Hedrick Smith wrote in The Russians (1976) that, according to Soviet statistics, one fourth of the value of agricultural production in 1973 was produced on the private plots peasants were allowed (2% of the whole arable land).[33] In the 1980s, 3% of the land was in private plots which produced more than a quarter of the total agricultural output.[34] i.e. private plots produced somewhere around 1600% and 1100% as much as common ownership plots in 1973 and 1980. Soviet figures claimed that the Soviets produced 20–25% as much as the U.S. per farmer in the 1980s.[35]"

The North Korean apparatchiks could wake up and do something sensible... No, Not Enough Jucheâ„¢! Whatever they do will probably make things worse.
Posted by: magpie   2021-07-14 18:49  

#6  No worries, all the CHinese Red Cross food aid will be coming over the border any moment, that's what allies are for....oh wait, they actually don't give a shit!
Posted by: NoMoreBS   2021-07-14 12:38  

#5  I think they have had their own gardens anyway. And like #4 says they army seizes some of them too or they would also starve.
Posted by: Ebbomoger Speaking for Boskone4589   2021-07-14 10:44  

#4  Nah, they'll scratch out a garden and the State will confiscate the food: Army First/Juche
Posted by: Frank G   2021-07-14 07:23  

#3  Pyongyang in talks with the Soylent Corporation?
Posted by: Procopius2k   2021-07-14 06:37  

#2  Long pig?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2021-07-14 01:35  

#1  Abolish the national government, and let the villages form their own governments. Divide the land equally among the people, but let them sell their shares to other people within the same village. Allow them to work for wages. Get back to a pre-industrial farming economy.

Abandon the cities for now, let the city dwellers move to the country and work for wages. Disband the army and give every adult a rifle - there are probably enough to go around.

In other words, abandon communism.
Posted by: KBK   2021-07-14 00:25  

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