On North Korean Famine

Capitalist Famines Also Kill.

“In 1981, Sen published Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen’s interest in famine stemmed from personal experience. As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. This staggering loss of life was unnecessary, Sen later concluded. He believed that there was an adequate food supply in India at the time, but that its distribution was hindered because particular groups of people—in this case rural labourers—lost their jobs and therefore their ability to purchase the food. In his book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981), Sen revealed that in many cases of famine, food supplies were not significantly reduced. In Bengal, for example, food production whilst down on the previous year was higher than in previous non-famine years. Thus, Sen points to a number of social and economic factors, such as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems. These issues led to starvation among certain groups in society. His capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a person’s actual ability to be or do something, rather than on negative freedom approaches, which are common in economics and simply focuses on non-interference. In the Bengal famine, rural laborers’ negative freedom to buy food was not affected. However, they still starved because they were not positively free to do anything, they did not have the functioning of nourishment, nor the capability to escape morbidity.” – Wikipedia

More Die In India.

“The famine only began to approach India’s year-in, year-out toll (in proportionate terms) of infant mortality and deaths from malnutrition or starvation which I only mention because the media’s recent habit of depicting Kim Jung Il’s frolicking among a heap of starved cadavers.” – Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country.

Conclusion: it does not help your cause using this as a lever in a smear campaign.

“I have no respect for a man who starves his own people” – George Bush, on Kim Jong-Il

“We banqueted with Kim and a group of grumpy old men… Outside, the people starved.” – Chris Patten

(These sources have nothing but praise for India’s leaders, who allow a system which starves far more, by the same logic.)

“Flood and drought have hit South Korea too. Some people drowned, and more lost property – yet nobody starved. That is the difference between sensible socio-economic systems, efficient and flexible, and stupid ones.” – Asia Times

“North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its people since 1995, when its agricultural system collapsed after decades of mismanagement.” – CBS News

(North Korea is still the most industrialised country in Asia, with a minimal “agricultural system” which collapsed temporarily thanks to many years of natural disasters. It cannot buy food thanks to US-led sanctions.)

Conclusion

No one is stopping India pissing its money away on nuclear weapons whilst its people starve. But its people are free to be millionaires, if they happen to be born in the right place at the right time, so it avoids the “axis of evil” treatment.

North Korea’s economic system is still stupid. Its foreign relations are based upon blackmail. It still has Stalinist surveillance systems, secret police and GULAGs. Its leaders are still corrupt. Its country is still full of human rights abuses. Its leader is so unmarketable that he was made a Bond villain (see also Rupert Murdoch).

So why the hell does the media/do politicians need to pick the North Korean famine as the damning evidence? It’s as close to spin as death gets.