This is a grim and troubling account of the 20th century's fifth great famine, a calamity that swept through North Korea during the 1990s, claiming an estimated 2.5 million lives (more than 10 percent of the national population).
The author argues persuasively that this was a man-made calamity, a symptom of regime failure and the consequence of unsustainable agricultural policies. He sides with Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winning economist, in depicting this as primarily a political and economic problem resulting in severe public health and nutritional consequences. In his view, the Korean people were the victims of a system that sacrificed their lives for the benefit of a Communist Party elite clinging to an outmoded ideology and failed policies. With mass famine to his credit, Kim Jong Il can now claim a place next to Mao and Stalin in the pantheon of grim reapers.
Andrew Natsios, former vice president of World Vision U.S., a nongovernmental organization that played a role in revealing and responding to the famine, had a ringside seat to this tragedy. He expresses accumulated frustration with the inadequate response of the donor community and the politics of aid that prevented a timely and adequate relief effort.
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