North Koreans Starving Who Aren't Supposed To Be

The general public of North Korea being malnourished is, unfortunately, not exactly front-page news. At least, it isn't in the sense that car crashes and cancer deaths aren't either. They are all tragic, but avoid the front page at least in part due to their all being common, and common knowledge.

However, as Mark Willacy of ABC (Australia) reports, new footage out of North Korea by a local journalist who managed to smuggle it out shows that the North Korean army is now starving as well. That is something to take note of.

After the Kims themselves, the army gets fed first. The army is how the Kims project their strength, impose their will. They are the people who stand guard at the borders. They are the people who run the day-to-day operations at the gulags. They are the people who watch for and crack down on any signs of dissent. As long as they're kept at least somewhat happy, the Kims can continue to conduct business as usual.

In fact, the promise of being fed regularly is a strong incentive to join the North Korean army in the first place.

That promise can seemingly no longer be upheld, and on Saturday, One Free Korea compiled and reviewed a growing body of consequences. According to One Free Korea, and the video reported on by Willacy, the army is now attempting to obtain their food from the black market that is the main food source for much of the general public, either through "donations" or outright looting. In addition, soldiers are now suffering from a lack of winter uniforms.

Most notably, to underscore just why some soldiers are soldiers at all, the lack of food is causing some to desert. That sets up a few important questions:

First, how weak can the army's constitution get, and how small can the army shrink, while still remaining a projective force, especially in the face of a transition of power between the Kims?

And second, is the rest of the world going to be able to bear to watch?

Glorious Computers For The People

Yesterday, a report came out that North Korea was going to make three models of computers available for office and home use. Gizmodo, among others, carries some of the details about what North Korean state TV reported. Because it's coming out of North Korea, it's probably best if we skip what they claim- somehow, I doubt learning foreign languages is going to actually be a feature.

It fell to Business Insider to point out the obvious: 'You people are getting your information from North Korean state television? What in blazes is wrong with you morons?' They allow that North Korea might be buying some computers on the cheap from elsewhere and slapping their own label on them, but they're not building their own. (Their assertion that "nobody in North Korea believed that report", though, is woefully underestimating of the sheer level of brainwashing that goes on there.)

Why give the people computers? It's speculation, of course- with North Korea it usually has to be- but maybe they figure that if they supply their own heavily-monitored computers, people might stop trying to bring in cell phones and such from outside. 'Look! We have technology! Why would you want anyone else's?' (Not that it'll actually stop the people who are bringing them in in the first place.)

The Gizmodo readers quickly identified one of the computers in question as a Sylvania laptop running Windows CE, a computer normally available here for $99; one reader pegged the version as 3.1. The fact that it's a laptop makes things interesting, because laptops are portable. More to the point, laptops are smuggle-able. All it's going to take is one refugee that manages to get over the border somehow with a laptop (we'll just leave it at "somehow"), and that laptop could easily find itself in the hands of a Western hacker. Assuming the hacker can bring the hideously-underpowered computer to heel, things would get very interesting from there.

Dangerously Short Tempers

As you may be aware, North and South Korea are getting progressively angrier with each other over the sinking of a South Korean ship by a North Korean torpedo. The two have cut all ties, and North Korea nullified any agreement meant to prevent further escalation.

Will this end in war? I'd give it about a 10% chance. North and South Korea have rising and falling tensions over the years- North Korea does something that angers everyone, they see how far they can push the envelope, and right before everyone gets angry enough to do something nasty to them, they back off and wait for everyone to calm down before the next episode. This episode, however, has a different air to it; unlike most things North Korea has done, this particular act- the deaths of a South Korean ship by North Korean weaponry- is an indisputable act of war and is being treated as such. If anything is going to lead to war, it seems like this would do it.

The mitigating factor, though, is that just about everybody knows basically how such a war would play out, and nobody would be happy with the result or else it probably would have happened decades ago: the second hostilities commence, North Korea fires every bit of artillery they've got directly at whatever has the most people in range, with Seoul tops on the hit list. While most of the artillery could not reach Seoul, and not all of Seoul could get hit by the artillery pieces, it would be squarely in the range of the second phase: the North Korean army swarming across the border. The deaths could easily reach into the millions. After that, though, the gross disparity in technology would take over, and North Korea would be driven back without much additional trouble by just about everybody in the Western world. The only reason North Korea wasn't smashed in the Korean War was because Douglas MacArthur pushed too far, across the Yalu River, and got China involved. It's been 50 years since then, and while South Korea and the Western allies have dramatically upgraded their weaponry, North Korea is using some of the exact same weapons they used last time.

China, meanwhile, would be too busy dealing with the swarms of refugees they've been propping up North Korea for the sole purpose of avoiding. They wouldn't be interested in bailing out North Korea again.

North Korea would this time be smashed, but at a terrible cost, and afterwards there would be a massive catch-up operation by whoever wound up looking after North Korea to bring them somewhat in line with the rest of the world, something nobody is overly thrilled about having to pay for.

In any case, over at Penny Arcade, a discussion has taken place over whether the ship-sinking that caused all this anger is, or ought to be, enough to justify all that.

Whether it is is really up to you. What I can say is that wars have been started over less. Much, much less...

*In 1925, a dog belonging to a Greek soldier scurried across the border with Bulgaria. When the soldier ran after it, he was shot by a Bulgarian border guard. The League of Nations calmed Greece down, but not before over 50 people, mainly Bulgarian civilians, had been killed in response.

*In 1896, the British Royal Navy was in Zanzibar, and stopped in to watch a cricket match. The sultan of Zanzibar, however, had not been informed that the Brits were stopping by, and he was a tad paranoid as he had (illegally) claimed power the previous day. So Zanzibar declared war on Britain. 38 minutes later, the sultan's palace was a pile of rubble, his one-ship navy was on the sea floor, and he was fleeing to German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania/Burundi/Rwanda). It is the current world-record holder for shortest war. The cricket match never took place.

*When Louis VII of France returned from the Second Crusade, he had grown a beard. At the time, according to Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, long hair was considered unholy by no less than Pope Urban II, to the point where the unshaven would be excommunicated. Louis shaved. His wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wanted the beard back. Louis said no. Eleanor got an annulment and married Henry II of England instead. Henry then told Louis to surrender Aquitaine to England, since according to him it should have gone to England with Eleanor. Louis said no. Cue Anglo-Franco hostilities for the next 301 years, going from 1152-1453.

Hopefully, the Koreas will be a bit more level-headed than that.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Ling-Ling Edition

Out today and added to the bookshelf, Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home, by Laura and Lisa Ling.

Amazing writing from both of them. Amazing and chilling. Even though I knew how it was going to end, that little nugget of information kept trying to fly the coop over and over again. Every few pages, I'd have to remind myself "This has a happy ending. This has a happy ending. You know it has a happy ending. The ending did not change while you were asleep last night."

It should also be noted that part of the proceeds will be split among three organizations, so if nothing else, at least go ahead and help one or more of them out:

*Liberty in North Korea (LiNK)
*Committee to Protect Journalists
*Reporters Without Borders