Rare Interviews With North Koreans Paint a Very Grim Picture

'We are stuck here, waiting to die'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 15, 2023 5:55 AM CDT
Updated Jun 18, 2023 7:15 AM CDT
North Koreans Say They Are Starving, Can't Escape
Interview with North Koreans suggest support for dictator Kim Jong Un is fading.   (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)

Food shortages and repression were hallmarks of life in North Korea long before COVID, but residents say the pandemic made things much, much worse and the situation remains desperate. The BBC says it was able to carry out extremely rare interviews with three ordinary North Koreans with the help of organization Daily NK, and all three said conditions had deteriorated drastically since the regime sealed the border in 2020, cutting off imports of food and agricultural equipment as well as a route around 1,000 people used to escape the country every year. The government declared victory over COVID last year but residents say many harsh measures are still in place.

One woman in Pyongyang says she is struggling to feed her family and she knows a family of three that starved to death. A construction worker who lives near the border with China says several people have starved to death in his village and a market trader says a crackdown on smuggling has left shelves empty and cut off connections to the world outside North Korea. All three say repression has become much worse since 2020, with people facing execution for smuggling foreign videos into the country—or trying to escape. Satellite images show that the border has been fortified with new walls and fences in the last three years.

"If I live by the rules, I'll probably starve to death, but just by trying to survive, I fear I could be arrested, branded a traitor, and killed," the construction worker says. "We are stuck here, waiting to die." Analysts say the interviews suggest conditions are at their worst since a devastating famine that killed up to 3 million North Koreans in the 1990s. "That normal, middle-class people are seeing starvation in their neighborhoods, is very concerning," says economist Peter Ward. "We are not talking about full-scale societal collapse and mass starvation yet, but this does not look good."

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The North Koreans who spoke to the BBC said people no longer trust each other amid harsh crackdowns on any form of dissent or foreign influence—but support for the regime appears to be fading. "Before COVID, people viewed Kim Jong Un positively," the market trader says. "Now almost everyone is full of discontent." (More North Korea stories.)

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