North Korean defector and her son die of starvation in South Korea after being denied welfare

[PyramidHead]

She died with her young son in an apartment in Seoul.


People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists.

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

No obligation?
The article says that they MAY have died of starvation.
And the govt. refers to this case as a possible blind spot in the administration of the various agencies involved, not the result of their official policies.

So, is there any news article showing that defectors are purposefully left to starve in SK?

 

[PyramidHead]

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

No obligation?
The article says that they MAY have died of starvation.
And the govt. refers to this case as a possible blind spot in the administration of the various agencies involved, not the result of their official policies.

So, is there any news article showing that defectors are purposefully left to starve in SK?

There's the rub. Any society that doesn't guarantee food and shelter to all of its inhabitants IS purposefully letting some of them starve and/or go homeless. There need not be an explicit policy stating that, but the absence of a policy that would mitigate it (when food and shelter are abundantly available, as they are in developed Western nations) is a distinction without a difference.

 

[Keith&Co.]

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

No obligation?
The article says that they MAY have died of starvation.
And the govt. refers to this case as a possible blind spot in the administration of the various agencies involved, not the result of their official policies.

So, is there any news article showing that defectors are purposefully left to starve in SK?

There's the rub. Any society that doesn't guarantee food and shelter to all of its inhabitants IS purposefully letting some of them starve and/or go homeless. There need not be an explicit policy stating that, but the absence of a policy that would mitigate it (when food and shelter are abundantly available, as they are in developed Western nations) is a distinction without a difference.

So., what IS the policy in SK? Where do you find it? Because the article you linked doesn't support your assertions..

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

She died with her young son in an apartment in Seoul.


People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists.

Interesting spin. We all know how cheap a nuclear weapons program is.

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

That is an unforgivable tragedy. Hopefully some reform comes from such a senseless death. I read about this a while ago, and a merchant didn't like the woman because she over examined every piece of produce. The merchant was horrified to find out the terrible state the woman and child were in and wish they had known.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There's the rub. Any society that doesn't guarantee food and shelter to all of its inhabitants IS purposefully letting some of them starve and/or go homeless. There need not be an explicit policy stating that, but the absence of a policy that would mitigate it (when food and shelter are abundantly available, as they are in developed Western nations) is a distinction without a difference.

So., what IS the policy in SK? Where do you find it? Because the article you linked doesn't support your assertions..

The article indicates that the woman and child starved to death in notable part because of paper work.

 

[PyramidHead]

There's the rub. Any society that doesn't guarantee food and shelter to all of its inhabitants IS purposefully letting some of them starve and/or go homeless. There need not be an explicit policy stating that, but the absence of a policy that would mitigate it (when food and shelter are abundantly available, as they are in developed Western nations) is a distinction without a difference.

So., what IS the policy in SK? Where do you find it? Because the article you linked doesn't support your assertions..

Simply, South Korea doesn't guarantee medical care, food, and shelter to all of its citizens, nor does it allow defectors from the DPRK to return there of their own free will. There are countless stories of defectors who regretted their choice, including this one from 2015:

North Korean defector says she's "trapped" in South Korea

Kim says she didn't realize that once she signed papers renouncing her North Korean citizenship she could never go home.
"I told them that I didn't know this so I wanted to escape. But the broker took away my passport from me and refused to give it back," she says.

"Other defectors who were with me said if I go out and get caught they too will be handed over to China's Public Security and their life will be in jeopardy. Because I didn't have a passport, I had to follow them and I ended up in South Korea."

Kim says that, at the time, she didn't even know what a North Korean defector was.

As soon as she arrived in South Korea, Kim began demanding to go home to the North.

For South Korea, it's not that easy. It has a protocol to bring defectors in, but it is illegal for them to return.

And in order to be released from a South Korean processing center, Kim says she had to sign document renouncing communism and agreeing to follow the laws of the South. By doing so, she became a South Korean citizen.

Kim says she's tried to find a smuggler, made repeated calls to the North Korean consulate in Shenyang, -- and then took a desperate measure she now calls "foolish."

She says she pretended to be a North Korean spy in order to be deported. But South Korea doesn't deport spies, they imprison them.

So after turning herself into the police, Kim was sentenced to two years for passport fraud and espionage. Her sentence was suspended in April and she is now out on parole and under close watch. Her status as a convicted criminal makes travel out of South Korea legally impossible.

She told CNN: "There is nothing else for me to say but I am sorry. I didn't even imagine that I would create such a huge problem.

"The wrong choice that I made, my choice of wanting to earn money for my treatment, led to the worst situation in my life. I am regretting with my heart and I am so sorry that I've brought such suffering to my aging parents and husband and my daughter."

Kim says she is now stuck in South Korea with no more options, working as a machine operator at a recycling plant.

"I am living in Daegu and I am going through a regular treatment in a hospital there," she says.

Although her health has improved, Kim says the mental anguish is unbearable. Her arms bear the scars of multiple suicide attempts.

That's not to mention the multiple confirmed frauds, paid actors, and unfortunate dupes lured by intelligence agencies with the promise of money, all categorized as innocent victims of a brutal dictatorship.

 

[Derec]

People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists the brutal neo-Stalinist communist dictatorship.

FIFY.

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

The article says that a cause of death could not be established. And in any case, this is one case, compared to tens of millions suffering in the communist north.

 

[ruby sparks]

She died with her young son in an apartment in Seoul.


People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists.

Interesting spin. We all know how cheap a nuclear weapons program is.

It's not cheap, but there are noble ways to pay for it, such as selling your generated electricity to other countries, leaving 99% of your own (apart from the capital) without lights at night.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The article says that a cause of death could not be established.

If they had good health care, there wouldn't be a cause of death to wonder about.

 

[ruby sparks]

There are countless stories of defectors who regretted their choice....

Countless. eh? How many of the 25,000 defectors are we talking about? Got some statistics to back that up? Didn't think so.

You've lost it completely mate.

By the way, South Korea does financially help NK defectors. Even the article in your own OP says so.

"Although South Korea does provide support to North Korean defectors, some believe they could do a lot more.

When defectors reach South Korea, they are given 8 million won ($6,704) cash. Two-person households also get unconditional welfare support of 870,000 won ($729) per month for six months, less than the country's average median income for a two-person household, which is 2.9 million won ($2,430)."

Sure, maybe they could do more, but it's hardly the picture you're trying to paint. Look, I'm sorry if Socialism has never really worked, and I can see why you're obliged to therefore try (unconvincingly) to big up North Korea, but it looks to me like scraping the barrel for nothing more than reasons of personal dogma.

 

[Metaphor]

She died with her young son in an apartment in Seoul.


People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists.

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

People starve in the north because it's a brutal communist shit hole run by despots.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

This is Trump's fault.

 

[ZiprHead]

This is Trump's fault.

Nah, it's Ayn Rand's fault.

 

[PyramidHead]

She died with her young son in an apartment in Seoul.


People starve in the north because the nation is fighting against the limits of their productive capacity to feed everyone after being reduced to rubble by imperialists.

People starve in the south because they see no obligation to make sure you are well-fed or housed.

People starve in the north because it's a brutal communist shit hole run by despots.

Educate
yourself
please.

Malnutrition deaths per 100,000 by country. The DPRK is around the same as Norway and about half that of France



Stunting and wasting as proxies for malnutrition put the DPRK in line with or better than most low income nations



The DPRK is heavily sanctioned, so economic hardship is to be expected. However, it is growing despite these sanctions

With the United Nations imposing yet another round of sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear provocations, it's worth asking why such penalties have been failing for more than a decade. One reason is that the North Korean economy is improving more than is commonly understood -- and that will make altering its behavior through trade barriers significantly harder.

The current approach to sanctions is partly based on the assumption that North Korea's economy is a socialist nightmare, but that's no longer really true. Although the country is still poor, its gross domestic product grew by an estimated 3.9 percent in 2016, to about $28.5 billion, the fastest pace in 17 years. Wages have risen quickly, and per-capita GDP is now on par with Rwanda, an African economic exemplar.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

yourself

From the preface ffs (emphasis mine):

Findings—Despite a precarious economy, the end of systematic food provision by the government, and a decline in aid from international organizations after 2001, the data shows that by the mid–2010s, national levels of severe wasting, an indication of famine- like conditions in the population, were lower than in other low income countries globally and lower than those prevailing in other developing countries in East Asia and the Pacific. Poverty and ill- health remained—as shown especially in terms of maternal health and infant mortality—but the incidence of malaria sharply declined and although the incidence of tuberculosis was up, the numbers of fatalities from both malaria and TB sharply declined.

Your own source--that you insisted we read to "educate" ourselves--indicates that "systematic food provision by the government" ended at some point years before this woman and her child defected.

It also goes on to note (emphasis mine):

It is now well- known that the DPRK went into economic freefall in the 1990s. The primary cause of decline remains debatable but the outcomes were uncontestably awful. Best estimates showed that in the resultant famine up to one million of the then population of 23 million died of hunger and malnutrition related disease. The effects of the famine were far- reaching—including, among other things, orphaned children and destitute adults. Unemployment, underemployment and an almost worth less currency (the North Korean won) meant that day to day life became a struggle for physical survival. International humanitarian organizations responded to the extreme risks to life and health with the provision of large- scale aid, mainly with food assistance, which reached its zenith in terms of volume and value in 2000/2001. Figure 1 shows the DPRK economy’s precipitous decline in the 1990s and the gradual recovery from the 2000s onwards; it also shows that the DPRK remained a poor country with average per capita gross national income never rising much over U.S.$1,000.

As a response to famine, the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, the largest food aid donors to the DPRK, donated food aid...

And then further in:

International agencies continued to warn that DPRK food security remained precarious but priorities changed from that of food availability to that of food accessibility, which in development studies and policy refers to the ability of individuals and households to secure their own food through purchasing, household production and/or other means. A shift from reliance on the government to the semi- legal market meant that tracing who got what food became more difficult for the international agencies and also meant that, in the post- famine era, food security for many individuals was neither predictable nor stable. Prior to the famine, food accessibility was almost exclusively via the government ration system. The government- directed and -managed public distribution system had allocated and distributed a food ration to every household based on a matrix of age, gender and occupation, at highly subsidized prices.31 The old system was fairly transparent and, although it did not always succeed in its aims, as food shortages were a perennial system characteristic and were sometimes severe as in the early 1970s’ near- famine conditions, food had remained cheap to the extent of being almost free.32 The universal food rationing system collapsed after the economic and social catastrophe of the mid–1990s, however, and the government never recovered the capacity to re- constitute the system.

Post-famine, the government abandoned the objective of providing a universal ration. The new aim was to provide a flat ration of basic grain to “key workers” that included the military (but not their families), the miners and some Party officials. Food available through the ration system remained cheaper than market prices but not as cheap as in the pre- famine era nor did the ration apply to the entire household. The key- worker ration was allocated to the individual worker and did not provide food for the worker’s family even in principle and it was also insufficient to sustain life and well- being for the person to whom it was allocated. Furthermore, ration entitlement did not always translate into actual receipt of rations as what remained of the public distribution system was not always supplied with food. Increases in agricultural output or food availability did not translate into a reconstitution of the pre- famine ration system.

Survey after survey of defectors in South Korea reported a shift from complete reliance on government provisioned food and other goods in the pre- famine era to almost complete reliance on the market in the post- famine era. In short, postfamine food accessibility was almost entirely a private affair.
...
One reason for the rapid uptake and inculcation of these new societal norms was that Party and security officials at every level relied on the markets’ operations to feed themselves and their families since the government could not provide a living wage or regular food rations. In these circumstances, there was little incentive for middle or local level officials to crack down on semilegal or grey area market operations.

Very educational. Thanks.

ETA: I missed this:

The North Korean state has recovered the capacity to implement effective national public health programmes in terms of the very successful vaccination coverage and anti- malaria campaigns, but there is still a lot more to do to control the incidence of TB. The health and nutritional status of mothers and infants, and others, remains far from satisfactory.

Iow, protecting the general population--and, thereby, the elites--against highly contagious agents has improved, but the health and nutritional "status" of the general population--of the mothers and the kids--not so much.

 

[Metaphor]

Educate
yourself
please.

Malnutrition deaths per 100,000 by country. The DPRK is around the same as Norway and about half that of France

View attachment 23958

Stunting and wasting as proxies for malnutrition put the DPRK in line with or better than most low income nations

View attachment 23959 View attachment 23960

The DPRK is heavily sanctioned, so economic hardship is to be expected. However, it is growing despite these sanctions

With the United Nations imposing yet another round of sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear provocations, it's worth asking why such penalties have been failing for more than a decade. One reason is that the North Korean economy is improving more than is commonly understood -- and that will make altering its behavior through trade barriers significantly harder.

The current approach to sanctions is partly based on the assumption that North Korea's economy is a socialist nightmare, but that's no longer really true. Although the country is still poor, its gross domestic product grew by an estimated 3.9 percent in 2016, to about $28.5 billion, the fastest pace in 17 years. Wages have risen quickly, and per-capita GDP is now on par with Rwanda, an African economic exemplar.

You're the one who claimed people starved in the north. It's right there in the post you quoted.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Educate
yourself
please.

Malnutrition deaths per 100,000 by country. The DPRK is around the same as Norway and about half that of France

View attachment 23958

Stunting and wasting as proxies for malnutrition put the DPRK in line with or better than most low income nations

View attachment 23959 View attachment 23960

The DPRK is heavily sanctioned, so economic hardship is to be expected. However, it is growing despite these sanctions

With the United Nations imposing yet another round of sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear provocations, it's worth asking why such penalties have been failing for more than a decade. One reason is that the North Korean economy is improving more than is commonly understood -- and that will make altering its behavior through trade barriers significantly harder.

The current approach to sanctions is partly based on the assumption that North Korea's economy is a socialist nightmare, but that's no longer really true. Although the country is still poor, its gross domestic product grew by an estimated 3.9 percent in 2016, to about $28.5 billion, the fastest pace in 17 years. Wages have risen quickly, and per-capita GDP is now on par with Rwanda, an African economic exemplar.

You think the numbers the DPRK publishes are remotely honest? They certainly didn't admit the huge numbers of deaths in the past.

 

[zorq]

This thread is bizarre. The mother and son were found more than two months after death. The bodies were so decomposed that the coroner could not identify cause of death.

That totally makes sense because human bodies start to LIQUIFY after only 1 month of decomposition, and these past two months in Korea were pretty hot!

So that we are all on the same page... actual medical and forensic authorities DON'T KNOW what the cause of death is. Do you notice how none of the articles about this case mention WHO suspects they died of starvation? That's because "starvation" is just a rumor at this point. It could have been food poisoning, influenza, domestic abuse, or maybe even "Korean fan death."

What I am hinting at with the last comment in my previous sentence is that a good chunk of Koreans tend to to jump to conclusions and and believe rumors (and internet rumors) without verifying their authenticity. The fact that the western news media picked up and started spreading these rumors is, I suppose, a testament to the poor state of reporting in the West.

Yes, South Korea is a capitalistic country which includes everything that implies. Some people are working poor. Some people are filthy rich despite being useless. Some people who need help are neglected. There is tons of room for improvement, and I don't want to stand in the way of that. But it is simply irresponsible to accept internet rumors at face value and let them influence your perception of reality and affect your decisions.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The DPRK is heavily sanctioned, so economic hardship is to be expected.

Whatever the real numbers are, and the real causes, sanctions and embargoes only make it worse. If there's real provocation needing a response, targeted military strikes are a better option, to inflict damage onto the regime in power.

The world would be better if we had *free trade with N Korea and Cuba and Iran and all countries, and no economic sanctions, regardless of ideological differences.

*unilateral free trade if necessary