Yes, I know North Korea has its own distinct cuisine (which is quite good). Then again, so does Ethiopia (which is also quite good), but I don’t seem to recall Bob Geldof filming a cooking show in Addis Ababa in 1985. I have to wonder if MBC realizes the perverse irony of shooting a holiday special on the local cuisine of a nation racked by famine. Anyway, according to the Korea Times:
Scheduled to air at 11:10 p.m. on Jan 31, “Journey Into the World of North Korean Dishes” will be jointly produced by MBC and North Korea’s Chosun Choongang TV. The program will take viewers to Pyongyang, Hamhung, Wonsan, and Kaesong, North Korean cities famous for their cuisine
and lots of starving people.Yang is accompanied by reporters from both the South and North as she narrates about the lives and food of North Korea. The program will introduce Pyongyang onban, Hamhung raengmyon, Wonsan tolkaejjim, Kaesong ginseng takgom and
North Korean tree bark stewmany other dishes.Viewers will also have a chance to take a look at how North Koreans spend their lunar New Year holidays, the diets of locals and classes at culinary schools.
Gee, I wonder how North Koreans spend their lunar New Year holidays? If I had to guess, I’d say they spend them freezing and starving, which might give some insight into the “diets of the locals,” as well.
MBC has yet to announce when it will broadcast its next special, “The Kosher Cuisine of Auschwitz.”
29 Comments
Are these people on crack?
It’s interesting that Americans like to say how starving the people are in the DPRK. The very worst of the famine in 1995-96 in the North was much less worse, on a proportionate basis, than the year-in year-out famines that constantly hit India. Nobody, however, portrays the Indian Prime Minister frolicking amid a heap of starved corpses like Kim Jong-il is portrayed.
It seems the ROK intelligence services still do a pretty good job at disseminating their own brand of analysis on the DPRK! Are people starving up North? Sure. Is it as bad as you would like it to be? NO.
It’s interesting that Americans like to say how starving the people are in the DPRK. The very worst of the famine in 1995-96 in the North was much less worse, on a proportionate basis, than the year-in year-out famines that constantly hit India. Nobody, however, portrays the Indian Prime Minister frolicking amid a heap of starved corpses like Kim Jong-il is portrayed.
It seems the ROK intelligence services still do a pretty good job at disseminating their own brand of analysis on the DPRK! Are people starving up North? Sure. Is it as bad as you would like it to be? NO.
Hi shin jong il,
First, those where UN sanctions against Iraq. There was also an oil-for-food program available but Saddam (like Kim Jong-il) prefered maintaining his army to feed the people he ruled over.
Second, I don’t know how many people realize this, but the USA is the leading food donor to North Korea. On a related note, the South Korean government places no restrictions on how their aid is used, which means that a lot of it is used for the Nork military (click on my name for the story).
The North Korean famine has been a fact of life since the 1990s, and to the extent that it has gotten better in the last few years (and nobody really knows how much better is has gotten) is mostly due to international aid / alternative cash flow programs (and the UN is warning of more starvation this winter as Pyongyang cuts food rations due to donor cuts). Coincidentally, the United States has been one of the largest donor nations to North Korea, a rather strange policy choice for a country that is apparently looking to use the famine as an excuse to invade.
We should also be very careful of drawing comparisons between India and North Korea — socio-economically, the starvations that have affected both nations are very different in character. You realize that, of course, so I’m sure I need not spell out the differences in full.
Andrew Natsios concludes that about 2.5 million North Koreans died of starvation or starvation-related causes over that short period in the mid-to-late 90s. I’m not sure what would constitute a “bad” famine if that doesn’t.
That figure, 2.5 million, is the result of estimates culled from people who were on the scene, literally thousands of interviews with refugees who crossed into China, and think tanks with experts who’ve tracked the dynamics of famine in many parts of the world– many of whom were on hand in NK to witness the famine firsthand. If you’ve got better info than they do, by all means tell us and show your sources. Here’s the one I’m working on:
Natsios, Andrew S. The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy. Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001.
Natsios’s book includes an extensive source list of its own, which I’ll be happy to relay here as well. He’s not a propaganda agent of the ROK, which had little interest in the mid-to-late 90s of playing up the NK famine; nor was Natsios a friend of either the Clinton Administration or the conservatives who argued against Clinton. He was, in fact, enduring scorn from people on all sides who insisted, for various reasons, that conditions in NK weren’t so bad.
Those people, as it turns out, were wrong.
As for Kim Jong-il and his pile of corpses… a person would have to be blind not to see that NK is one immense killing field.
Kevin
Actually, looks like things are really turning around in the North right now, economically at least… look for a bunch of stories in the media in the next week or so about it.
Haisan,
I’ll be curious to see what’s up. My reading is primarily in Natsios right now; he puts the end of the famine at around 1998, so it’d make sense that things have been on the up-and-up since that time.
We also have to see how much of this good news concentrates itself on Pyongyang. Pyongyang is a huge front; it’s not representative of the rest of NK. But if things are going better, than I’m ready for any excuse to stop shoveling food into an undeserving NK’s gullet.
Kevin
according to the un, up to 1.5 million died due to sanctions imposed by the us. most who died were children.
our latest blitzkrieg killed up to ten thousand.
haven’t seen any outpouring sympathy from my fellow americans re the above.
curious. well, not so curious since the us has a right to kill as many black, brown, and yellow people as is neccesary.
‘the whore fancied she was royal, but she was just a whore.’ Meeweesonja, ancient philosopher
the 1.5 million who died where iraqis, of course.
so sorry for errors above.
Kevin: The point of my post was to point out the inconsistencies in reportage on the famine that took place in the North. More importantly, I believe that much of the starvation talk about North Korea is motivated by a certain geopolitcal strategy that necessitates an invasion of the DPRK. (i.e. “they are starving, so: they are led by a bad government, so: they are evil, so: let’s knock ‘em out and open them up to the market!”) Following this logic, the USA should make plans to invade India.
“Following this logic, the USA should make plans to invade India.” No, following your “logic” they would. Using proper logic, the US would not. India and North Korea are two vastly different cases. India is the world’s largest democracy and India is not closed off to the world. The North will collapse on its own accord. There’s no need to attack it — it’s easy enough just to strangle its economy through an economic blockade and the withdrawal of food aid. Also, it is NK’s leadership that is “evil,” not the people.
Gotta love that typo in the KT headline–paper’s such a joke. Years ago somebody took me to a restaurant in Kangnam that was “famous” for N. Korean mandu. Didn’t seem especially different than the Southern variety, but it seems like nostalgia is the big factor here, and in the article, which is otherwise mainly that domestic media head-up-the-ass, uh, perspective.
Totally unrelated, but Seoul is really pleasant today without most of the population. Still sucks to have to work, though….
>>The very worst of the famine in 1995-96 in the North was much less worse, on a proportionate basis, than the year-in year-out famines that constantly hit India.
1. I’m not convinced that famines “constantly hit India” in modern times. Evidence?
2. By comparing India and North Korea on a “proportionate basis”, you are implying that about 1/10th of India’s population — 100 million people — died of famine.
Funny how “Mark” and “Shin” both use the schoolboy argument of “You think it’s bad in N. Korea, what about [totally unrelated topic]?” “Are people starving up North? Sure. Is it as bad as you would like it to be? NO.” Huh? How bad would we like it to be? WTF? Clever lad, he’s seen how brainwashed we are by ROK intelligence about the DPRK. Interesting that he uses those acronyms.
And as far as the 1.5 million go, that number was bandied about by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, not exactly an uninterested party:
http://cbc.ca/stories/2001/07/11/iraq010711
See, e.g., http://www.smh.com.au/articles.....96870.html
Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues until the authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly parades in small coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi state television and visiting journalists.
But that’s all irrelevant to North Korea, as has been pointed out before.
Famine in Iraq? Starvation? I don’t know about you but I see some pretty big guts on the Iraqis I see on TV and a belly like that is not made in one year….
i’m not going to argue with you all about numbers. quite a few organizations have verified that hundreds of thousands if not millions of iraqis died due to lack of medicine brought on by the sanctions the us imposed. any tears from any of you? i didn’t think so.
and my talk about iraq is very relevant to the comments you’re making about koreans. please think outside the box.
‘the whore thought she represented civilization, but she was just a whore.’
muryong tabi, ancient poet
I’m sorry, but I have yet to see how your comments about Iraq are relevant to North Korea, except that both cases show how a regime’s poor decision making internationally and even poorer allocation of resources domestically can lead to extremely difficult circumstances for the people governed by said regime.
Moreover, Iraq and India have nothing to do with MBC visiting cooking schools in a starving country. No matter whom you blame for North Korea’s troubles, you have to acknowledge that running such a program is, at the very least, in extremely poor taste.
I saw it by my own eyes (from a TV program though) that North Koreans fry meat on picnics. Or not.
That was a very funny scene in a (French?) documentary of NK cinema, of which I’m translating the Korean language parts. There is this one very skinny guy on a picnic with perhaps his wife, who tells how he liked this movie which was popular in NK in 2000 and how it related to his own life. On a later cut it is shown that there are two other men present and that they are frying meat in a gas grill. The two others wear sunglasses and are well-fed. No-one is seen to touch the meat.
Heck, the “official tone” of the DPRK Korean is difficult to understand.
well, mr marmot, a country willing to bring about the death of millions through sactions is not in a position to lecture others on how they’re helping to starve others.
please do not use a different standard with me. the others here did not keep their comments to just the cooking show.
shin
The North Korean cooking show is as surreal an experience as holding a memorial barbeque for a vegetarian. Once again, the PDs at MBC have demonstrated what morons they really are. These *are* the same PDs that closed and locked their offices when the government was investigating bribery in the entertainment industry last year.
a country willing to bring about the death of millions through sactions is not in a position to lecture others on how they’re helping to starve others.
Helping to starve others by GIVING food aid to North Korea, for example? … and, of course (unlike the recent war and current occupation) Iraqi sanctions were imposed by the U.N. not the U.S. … but don’t let facts and logic get in the way of your argument since that’s not the Korean way …
‘iraqi santions were brought on by the un not the us.’ ariwrong
‘the un is a foreign policy tool of the us.’ condaleeza rice
it is the us that insisted on continuing sanctions on iraq. but it’s nice for you to be able to say that it was the un. that way, you don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror the truth that the us has been responsible for the deaths of not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but MILLIONS. and that’s in just the last 15 years! i’ll take being korean over being someone like you anyday, sir.
let me ask you something, mr. ariwong, mr right-and-wrong, mr. i-tolerate-no-wrong:
does the us have a right to initiate a war on the korean peninsula without the consent of the south korean people?
my answer would be in almost all cases, a resounding no! the only exceptions i’d make are,
if one, it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that north korea transferred an atomic bomb to terrorists or two, north korea attacks south korea or japan. now, let me ask you again, mr. moral-clarity:
does the us have a right to initiate a war on the korean peninsula without the consent of the south korean people?
you need not respond; i already know the answer.
and you call yourself civilized?
i think not.
‘iraqi santions were brought on by the un not the us.’ ariwrong
‘the un is a foreign policy tool of the us.’ condaleeza rice
The UN is a foreign policy tool for ALL its member nations. Almost every foreign ministry on the planet has made similar statements. BTW, if you would’t mind, I like some context to that Condy quote — I couldn’t seem to find it after running a Google search.
While I won’t go too much into the details of the Iraq sanctions (although I find it odd that you’d condemn the United States alone for those sanctions while giving a pass to the other four permanent members of the UNSC, all of whom vetoed or threatened to vetoe changes in the sanctions program at one time or the other. Hey, even the Iraqi government, for that matter, at one point threatened to stop selling oil through the UN oil-for-food program, apparently because dead children made for good PR), I will point out that your criticism of the Iraq sanctions (and in particular, the manner in which you are making them) is a two-edged sword. Since, apparently, tear count is important, did YOU cry when the world slapped sanctions on apartheid South Africa during the 80s and white-ruled Rhodesia through most of the 60s and 70s? My guess is, probably not — you probably felt good putting a stop to all that evil Republican trade with and investment in two racist, right-wing garrison states. Of course, much like in Iraq, those sanctions in South Africa and Rhodesia hit the poorest segments of society the hardest (i.e., the black people whom the sanctions were designed to help), but that didn’t seem to matter much at the time to the Left — it was “the right thing to do,” I was told, and evil right-wingers like myself (with our even eviler theories of “constructive engagement” and the like) were condemned as apartheid-enablers for opposing sanctions. It’s not that hard to find other examples of the (often anti-American) Left supporting crippling sanctions on particular regimes that didn’t fit their Workers’ Paradise profiles.
Besides, if we Americans are guilty of mass-murder because of those sanctions, guess who’s guilty of accessory to mass murder? That’s right — South Korea! South Korea faithfully (for the most part) applied those sanctions to Iraq, it certainly never complained about the application of said sanctions (except when it hurt Korean business interests), and we won’t even discuss South Korea’s participation in both Iraq wars. I could go on, but that would be neither polite nor constructive. I only wish to say that I’d think long and hard before I make a statement like “i’ll take being [insert nationality] over being someone like you anyday, sir” (which is all very fine and good) on account of my nation’s supposedly blood-free hands.
Gents,
More identity theft (check the IP address on that short “Kevin Kim” comment, and you’ll see it’s probably our dickless guy in Beijing).
The Dad quote is in fact something my Dad said (it’s taken way out of context here). The rest of that post is made up. The clue: the idiot writes “Iraqi’s,” not “Iraqis.” I’m much more anal-retentive about my spelling than this bungwipe. And any reader of my blog knows better than to believe I’d write that crap.
Hey, lux bearer– having fun sniffing my dingleberries? I swear, you follow me around like a puppy. It’s touching.
Kevin Kim
“haisan”- “Actually, looks like things are really turning around in the North right now, economically at least… look for a bunch of stories in the media in the next week or so about it.”
Right. Like this one from Walter Duranty? I understand it must have taken a lot of effort to set up the guided tour for the diplomat and get that disgusting propaganda out, but if it were my handiwork, I wouldn’t urge people to pay much attention to it. Thanks anyways, though, for the heads-up! I, for one, will make sure to keep an eye out for more.
Pretty much every other source on earth that’s not on the payroll agrees that North Korea is facing another purposefully deadly famine. Here’s just a few:Amnesty International, Washington Times, Chosun Journal.
Where are you posting from, “haisan”, Pyongyang or Berkeley?
The recent stories about improvements in the living standards of ‘ordinary North Koreans’ have one thing in common, they are all based on the situation in Pyongyang and several other large cities. Under the North Korean caste system, most of the people in the ‘hostile’ class are internally exiled to the 47 counties that make up what the WFP calls the ‘closed areas’. Those areas are where the truly horrendous stories are coming from and those areas are closed to all foreigners, tourists, etc. They are certainly closed to journalists. North Korea is a Potemkin village of monsterous
proportions, nothing is as it seems. To live in Pyongyang you and all of your ancestors going back to before the current regime must have had spotless political records. Truly they are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones.. well, most of them have probably already died.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! NORTH KOREA IS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE!!! Dry that one out and you could fertilize your lawn. Many often-quoted ignoramouses have predicted that the North is “about to collapse” for the past 20 years. When does the staute of limitations run out on being consistently WRONG?
About the show on North Korean food:
I don’t see what the big deal is. They are talking about food that traditionally comes from north of the 38th parallel. You know this food came about PRIOR to the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party! They’re just talking about the food that just happens to be FROM that PART of Korea, not about how wonderful Kim Jong-il’s personal cooks are! My God, get a grip!
PING:
TITLE: Next Up: We Cover Pyongyang’s Presidential Debates
BLOG NAME: Barry Talks!
Now here is a truly amazing story (via Marmot ): a South Korean actress is going to North Korea to do a TV special on North Korean cuisine .
PING:
TITLE: Gourmets in the Land of the Walking Dead.
BLOG NAME: Tasty Manatees
People are starving in North Korea while gourmet shows showcase local delicacies. Thanks to the Marmot for pointing out this amazingly inappropriate show….