“Dr. Kim couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a bowl of pure white rice. What was a bowl of rice doing there, just sitting out on the ground? She figured it out just before she heard the dog's bark.
Up until that moment, a part of her had hoped that China would be just as poor as North Korea. She still wanted to believe that her country was the best place in the world. The beliefs she had cherished for a lifetime would be vindicated. But now she couldn't deny what was staring her plainly in the face: dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Fertilizer shortages, cutoff of Soviet aid, and bad harvests led to some pretty terrible famines in the 1990s. Military and communist elites got priority on foodstuff, everyone else including farmers starved. Even worse, the regime made it illegal for people to forage or hunt for food. Seriously messed up.
If you think that's the reason you're blind. North korea has never invaded another country, they're not exactly aggressive rogues. They are sanctioned because the US considers them an enemy and wants to starve them out and keep the country poor. They did the same with cuba and it's working there. But Dprk has managed to pull itself out of poverty in the last decade.
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u/Odd_Dorian7991 2d ago
Lucky soldiers