International North Korea boasts of ‘the world’s strongest’ missile, but experts say it’s too big to use in war

[Fluffernutter]

Checks out. Only size queens and fat guys think bigger is better, and Kim is both.

I remember when he first took power, NK propaganda always showed Americans as fat and lazy as a put down.

Then, Kim came into power

 

[KAZSoliloquy]

My gut tells me (no pun intended) that NK has a higher rate of starvation than it's neighbors.

Plus, if you randomize four countries from each continent, NK would have a higher starvation rate.

Heck, the median height and weight between NK and SK citizens are quite different

i mean, i wouldn't be 100% surprised considering the sanctions they've been dealing with for decades at this point, but i haven't seen many starving north koreans. and i certainly don't buy the "they magically keep all the starving people off camera" notion.

 

[fungi]

- Kim said to them to eat their pets.

Like in Ohio?!!

 

[freakroor]

kim jong un is a size queen

 

[TankAbbott4Eva]

And who controls the videos that you see?

Exactly, I thought that poster was making a joke tbh

 

[Madmick]

i mean, i wouldn't be 100% surprised considering the sanctions they've been dealing with for decades at this point, but i haven't seen many starving north koreans. and i certainly don't buy the "they magically keep all the starving people off camera" notion.

Oh, the sanctions! The terrible sanctions!

North Korea reportedly suffered its worst famine during the COVID crisis since the Arduous March. We know this because of North Korean defectors.

1990s North Korean famine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

...a period of mass starvation together with a general economic crisis from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea.

The famine stemmed from a variety of factors. Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster. North Korea attempted to obtain aid and commercial opportunities, but failed to receive initial attention.[8][6][9]

Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Out of a total population of approximately 22 million, somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses, with the deaths peaking in 1997.[10][11] A 2011 U.S. Census Bureau report estimated the number of excess deaths from 1993 to 2000 to be between 500,000 and 600,000.[12]

So, no, it wasn't "decades of sanctions" causing the problem. It was because of North Korean government, and their inability to feed their own country. That remains today. It's simply China that has taken up the mantle of Communist donator. Guess why they had another mass starvation event during the COVID crisis? Do you think it could be that China's donation exports were cut by 80%? Hmmm...

Let's take that 500K-600K excess mortality figure from the USA, btw. If we adjusted that to the USA's population, that means 7.6m Americans would have starved to death during that period. That's a population sizer greater than the entire state of Colorado, Tennessee, or Massachussets. Imagine that. Everyone in those states. Dead. Emaciated corpses.

They don't let anyone see or know anything, so the congruous testimony from everyone that escapes reporting widespread starvation as part of everyday life in North Korea is the most reliable information we have, something that most definitely isn't common across the rest of the world, where sub-2.5% rates of mere undernourishment is the mode rate across countries (the lowest rate recorded, btw). We also have estimates from the FAO what the shortage of food is in tonnage relative to their population. It's running at about 860K tons short a year, now, for just 26m people.

And it should come as no surprise that North Korea's largest trade deficit is in food. That's because they don't have any food to export. It's all imported whether they pay for it or not. Just looking at what they pay for, between the #2 animal/vegetable fats, #5 cereals/grains, and #8 sugar, food makes up by far the greatest net deficit of all their worst 10 import exchanges accounting for nearly 50% a greater deficit than their #1 negative good (plastics).

It's astonishing anyone could be this ignorant because they're determined to disbelieve what every transparent government in the world is in agreement in telling us about North Korea. These governments agree on almost nothing, and yet they agree North Korea is a shithole that can't feed its people.