North Korea's Weak Agricultural Industry

Little is known about the lifestyle of the people in North Korea. We, as citizens of the world, often hear the horrific stories of prisoners held at concentration-like camps, involving torture by guards, unsanitary conditions, rape along with involuntary abortions, deliberate starvation, cannibalism, public executions, brainwashing, death, and other barbaric treatment that breaks human rights laws (Kwon, 2013, p. 199). The most common form of punishment in these political prison camps is forced labor, where laborers are sentenced many years to work in the fields in order to stimulate North Korea’s weak agricultural industry. Because of the inadequacy of the industry, food is often hard to come by, leaving people hungry and without sympathy …show more content…
This means that all the land was taken by the government and redistributed to farmers to use, though owned by the government (Poverty & Famine, 2012). Farmers could use the land by entering either shared farms or state farms, while private farming was illegal. Then Kim Il Sung, the leader at the time, started grain distribution programs supported by their biggest ally, the Soviet Union. At first these programs worked, but many problems developed. They were using too many chemical fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation systems, and other machinery – so while they were overproducing, they were also spending too much on all these tools in order for them to keep producing food. This also ruined the soil over time, so all the land had been exhausted and farmers could no longer use the same techniques. And, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, all government programs were halted, forcing North Korea to become aid-dependent, and so they turned to the United …show more content…
Songbun is assigned to every person at birth: “[It’s a] heredity-based class and socio-political rank over which the individual exercises no control but which determines all aspects of his or her life,” and groups families, not individuals, into one of three categories: “Loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile” (Collins, 2012, p. 1). The government’s continued use of songbun is interpreted as a means for its own survival, and its ongoing systematic punishment of those who are at the bottom of the ladder. Because the country's statistics are so unreliable, nobody knows the exact number of deaths caused by the famine. But common estimates are between 2.5 million to 3.7 million (Natsios,