# From a realpolitik POV, why does the North Korean regime let their people starve **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 5, 2018, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853 "2018-04-05T05:25:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/21 "2018-04-05T18:18:19Z")
Yeah, I’ve been saying for some time that the folks who engineered the current North Korea looked at things like the book _1984_ and the Nazi camps during WWII and said something like - there’s a bunch of good ideas here _but they didn’t take them far enough…_ ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/22 "2018-04-05T19:16:32Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I’m not asking from a humanitarian POV, because the North Korean regime is evil. I’m asking from a strictly selfish (to the regime) reason. > > For one thing, arguably the major thing, malnutrition vastly reduces physical and cognitive health. As a result lots of North Koreans aren’t as capable of fighting in wars as they could be. You almost had it. It’s not wars in general, it’s that they can’t fight against their own government if they are too busy simply trying to stay alive from one day to the next. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/23 "2018-04-05T19:22:00Z")
The country has never been able to feed itself or produce goods that other people want to buy. Currently, UNICEF surveys show about 30% of NK children are malnourished to the point of stunted growth, and 7% severely malnourished. As we saw from the DMZ defector, even its soldiers are riddled with intestinal parasites. The extreme famine caused by the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies was an unexpected jolt, but otherwise the fact that the country has worked this way since its inception suggests that what is happening is what is intended. I agree with **Broomstick** and the others who cited Nineteen Eighty-Four: Remember that the postscript specifically discusses how the purpose of the endless war was to destroy resources that otherwise would enrich the domestic population. A comfortable country is harder to repress. Prosperity inevitably brings demands for political participation, whereas (as **Clothahump** mentions) people who are chronically hungry and fixated on where their next meal is coming from are less likely to find the time and energy to organize. In more immediate terms, someone who oversees the production of a lot of food or a lot of worthwhile export goods is naturally going to develop his or her own political power base (particularly if they’re making money in the process), and the regime cannot permit that. The Kim family knows very well that if the country’s military and civilian elite (let alone the population at large) are ever given a serious choice as to their leadership, plenty of them are going to choose “not Kim.” Certainly, it’s harder to fight a war with soldiers who are nutritionally and cognitively impaired. The likely conclusion to draw would seem to be that the Kim regime does not foresee having to fight a war in the foreseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/24 "2018-04-05T19:53:24Z")
> [@](#): > > From a realpolitik POV, why does the North Korean regime let their people starve From a realpolitik POV the answer is because they can. It’s a totalitarian regime that has built such a cult of personality that the population is convinced that their very existence hinges on the Kim family, that all things (good and bad) come from the family, and that it’s the only thing that keeps the evil US at bay. They have also been told for generations that they actually have it good compared to South Korea (which is depicted as a poverty ridden hell hole much worse than North Korea) or the US (which is depicted as poor and full of rebellion and racial strife). This doesn’t mean the regime deliberately starves the people, but when you have a limited resource base and you have to choose between, say, the military that will keep you in power and ensuring the common people have enough to eat (the elite of course are well fed) you are going to pragmatically choose the military every time, especially since you aren’t going to feel the brunt of the privation and since there is essentially zero chance of any sort of rebellion or uprising. > [@](#): > > Malnutrition created and keeps the black markets thriving, which undermine the regime. The black markets empower individual citizens, and they help to spread outside media. This doesn’t really undermine the regime in any sort of tangible way from the view point of the Kim family. The cult of personality and godlike narrative and mythology built around the Kim family makes them pretty immune to this sort of thing, as well as the narrative/mythology that literally every nation on the planet is against them and that the US is poised to invade anytime the Kim families guard is down. It gives the population a bunker mentality that’s difficult to really understand to anyone not from North Korea. Remember, these are people who believe, literally, things like their leaders hitting 18 holes in one the first time they played golf, that they don’t have to shit or pee…ever…that they invented hamburgers and have written all of the great music and plays allowed to be heard or seen in North Korea, along with myriad other things most non-North Koreans would find ludicrous. > [@](#): > > The death of millions in the 90s caused a lot of people to lose faith in the regime. Not really. I’d say that exposure to the relatively ‘free’ information from China has had a more profound effect, as has smuggled in black market shows and music from South Korea. Even so, while a lot of folks have fled to China (or tried to), I don’t think this constitutes ‘a lot of people’ in terms of percentage of the population. ---
**Author:** ![WillReadmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/6f9a4e/32.png) [@WillReadmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillReadmore)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/25 "2018-04-05T20:50:46Z")
NK was born of the Korean war and abuts China. As I understand it, they have a military of about the same head count as ours while being 1/7th our population. When you consider the number fit for service, NK is seriously sacrificing for its military. My bet is that a major amount of their economic problems come from them being paranoid. And, that would also explain their perceived need of nuclear deterrence. One could imagine that once they believe they have nuclear deterrence they could return a significant portion of their military to productive service - which would surely be hugely significant to their economy. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/26 "2018-04-05T21:15:18Z")
When people are worrying about getting enough food to live on they do not have the means to conduct a rebellion. That is my guess because it sounds good in theory. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/27 "2018-04-05T21:20:59Z")
> [@Uniqueorn](#): > > The military and science elite are well cared for, certainly better than the normal population. Apparently they can’t even handle that. The government does not take care of them; they are basically on their own. And corruption is rampant so any food that is acquired is picked over and sold off for profit by the senior officers, then the actual soldiers must make do with any scraps left over. This and many other reports from inside NK demonstrate how bad things have gotten: > [@](#): > > Former soldier Joo-il Kim exclusively told [Express.co.uk](http://Express.co.uk) life in the army was a hellish experience - one which eventually convinced him to escape across the border. > > Now living in London and speaking from his Free NK newspaper office in New Malden, London, he revealed soldiers were not just failing to protect the country but actively destroying it. > > He said soldiers were all but abandoned by the government, with malnutrition common. The starving soldiers were kept disciplined by regular beatings and kept fed by pillaging local villages. > > Mr Kim said: “Before I went into the military I thought I was living in the best place in the world. After I went to the military I saw the real face of the North Korean army and society. > > “What I learned in textbooks was the soldiers were helping people. What I saw in reality was there were thieves everywhere, soldiers were beating people, even some soldiers were dying from starvation.” > > He said female soldiers were so malnourished their periods would stop and they would lose their hair. > **[North Korea EXCLUSIVE: Civilians beaten and robbed by soldiers](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/895114/north-korea-news-army-soldiers-defector-joo-il-kim-kim-jong-un)** > > NORTH Korea’s army is plagued by starvation, cruelty, and fear, a high-ranking defector has revealed to Express.co.uk. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/28 "2018-04-06T00:18:32Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > …It’s why everyone outside of the Inner Party in _1984_ lived a shoddy hand-to-mouth existence: maintain a simmering but manageable hatred to be focused and directed according to the needs of the Party. Well it was the Outer Party that had the worst of it; the Proles had a somewhat higher standard of living and more freedoms than the Outer Party, at least as long as they kept breeding, working, & fighting without getting too smart. ---
**Author:** ![theR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@theR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theR)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/29 "2018-04-06T16:55:45Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Does the NK regime (aka, the Kim clan) have the means to properly feed the populace and do all the other things it wants to do? Communism/totalitarianism is a notoriously poor way to run an economy, so producing food isn’t anywhere near as easy as it is in the rest of the world. To import food, you need cash. Sanctions have something to do with this, too. Johnny Bravo mentioned how they apply in theory, but in reality one of the common criticisms of sanctions are that they hurt the people in a case like this because the leader will make the people absorb the impact without giving up any of his own power or luxury. I think some sanctions work, and some don’t, but have no idea whether the ones against North Korea accomplish anything to change the nuclear efforts of North Korea. It seems like the carrot has worked better than the stick in the past 20+ years, but I honestly know very little other than the superficial. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/30 "2018-04-06T17:18:01Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > I think this is the best answer. North Korea is not a fertile field of grain. It’s mountainous and the soil is not particularly good for farming. That means that they are not really agriculturally self-sufficient, but at the same time they don’t have much of an economy in other sectors to produce capitol to trade for agricultural products. The government has certainly tried implementing policies to increase agricultural production and they actually produce more food than the south now, but it’s just not enough for the population and with no real way to trade for more food, they are in a pickle. Bottom line is that I think that if North Korean leadership had a magic wand, they’d gladly wave it and feed their people, but they don’t. I agree with you and John. North Korea is not a wealthy country with a lot of surplus resources. That’s not enough to do everything. And the government places a higher priority on building up its military strength than it does on feeding the people. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/31 "2018-04-06T18:27:40Z")
The funny thing is that, when it was split into North and South Korea, North Korea had most of the heavy industry and South Korea was the agricultural part ([cite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Korea)). Now South Korea is one of the Asian Tigers, and imports food, and NK is a basket case who can produce neither food nor goods. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/32 "2018-04-06T18:29:15Z")
The North Koreans have not [had a food shortage in two decades.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/indepth/opinion/2014/03/n-korea-myth-starvation-2014319124439924471.html) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/33 "2018-04-06T18:44:29Z")
North Korea had food shortages as of March 2017. > [@](#): > > 10.5 million people, or 41% of the total population, are undernourished. [Cite](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39349726). Unless you want to try to parse the difference between being short of food and being undernourished. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/34 "2018-04-06T19:55:33Z")
> [@theR](#): > > Sanctions have something to do with this, too. Johnny Bravo mentioned how they apply in theory, but in reality one of the common criticisms of sanctions are that they hurt the people in a case like this because the leader will make the people absorb the impact without giving up any of his own power or luxury. I think some sanctions work, and some don’t, but have no idea whether the ones against North Korea accomplish anything to change the nuclear efforts of North Korea. It seems like the carrot has worked better than the stick in the past 20+ years, but I honestly know very little other than the superficial. In that case, it’s the fault of the leader, not the sanctions. The NK leader has no legitimacy to begin with, but if he had any, he would lose it by choosing to starve his people. (Yes, “starve” might be an exaggeration, but if it matters, change that to “prevent them from being properly fed”). ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/35 "2018-04-06T20:01:24Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I’m not asking from a humanitarian POV, because the North Korean regime is evil. I’m asking from a strictly selfish (to the regime) reason. > > For one thing, arguably the major thing, malnutrition vastly reduces physical and cognitive health. As a result lots of North Koreans aren’t as capable of fighting in wars as they could be. There also aren’t as many potential scientists to work on the North Korean nuclear, chemical, biological weapons programs, or commit international fraud, or build ICBMs, or work for cyberhacking teams, etc. Their entire national security apparatus could collapse if too many of the public are too mentally and physically sick from malnutrition. Having huge swaths of the country suffer from lowered cognitive and physical health doesn’t help the regime survive. > > Malnutrition created and keeps the black markets thriving, which undermine the regime. The black markets empower individual citizens, and they help to spread outside media. > > The death of millions in the 90s caused a lot of people to lose faith in the regime. > > It costs less than $1/day to provide enough food for one person per day (I’m assuming you can provide enough calories for as little at $0.30 a day or so). Granted this can add up over the course of a year for a nation of 25 million. But with minor reforms, North Korea could have increased their agricultural productivity. > > On the other hand, I guess starving people are easier to control as you can take their food away as punishment. They are also more divided as starvation turns friends and families against each other. > > But it seems like allowing mass starvation has led to a large decrease in the human capital of the North Korean nation, empowered the black markets and made people lose faith in the regime. North Korea is a state that was founded on lies, with the greatest lie being that their people could trust the Kim regime enough to give up 100% of their liberty and sense of self. It’s not so much that the North Koreans “let” their people starve; they just don’t have a government that functions well enough to keep people from starving. Starvation is a constant strain and a constant threat to the Kim regime. It’s just a matter of how many of the wrong people starving it takes before people (most likely the military) begin openly challenging the Kim regime. This dire situation is a major reason why Kim wants nuclear weapons. Not because he’s crazy or that he intends to start a war that would expand his borders - Kim probably knows the moment a major war begins North Korea and anyone, it’s probably the beginning of the end of his regime. He has the power to make a war painful and messy for anyone who dares to take him on - that’s not in doubt. But it’s almost certain that his regime would not survive a full-on war. Nuclear weapons are a way for Kim to continue being the crazy guy waving the gun around. He can use his nuclear program as a bargaining chip to ease sanctions so that he can at least feed a few more corporals, even if many civilians continue to starve into perpetuity. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/36 "2018-04-06T21:35:16Z")
> [@WillReadmore](#): > > NK was born of the Korean war and abuts China. > > As I understand it, they have a military of about the same head count as ours while being 1/7th our population. When you consider the number fit for service, NK is seriously sacrificing for its military. Counting reservists in both cases, the NK military is 2 or 3 times the size of the US military just counting people, depending on estimate. The population is ~13 times smaller. The ROK’s population is around 1/7 that of the US, its total military manpower including reservists is slightly smaller than the DRPK’s. Of course ‘including reservists’ is a big condition, since both those countries are nominally able to mobilize forces a multiple of their active force, if only lightly equip a large portion of them. The US reserve component is smaller than the active force, there’s no system of training all able bodies males (or people) and retaining them as any kind of organized reserve. And head count is a limited measure, obviously. The DPRK isn’t suffering famine now nor apparently has on a widespread basis in many years. But a lot of people there are undernourished apparently. The regime would better off if they were not but it didn’t require any policies which might otherwise loosen, or threaten to, the regime’s hold on power. But, that’s a big constraint. I don’t think it’s a question of the regime preferring a very poor peasantry in a vacuum, it’s the dangers contained in policies which would change that. Like obviously de-nuclearization: the cost to the outside world to basically eliminate hunger in a verified de-nuclearized NK is trivial. The value of the bargaining chip to the regime, for its future existence, that it would thereby give up is not. Likewise economic reforms profound enough to significantly close the gap in GDP per capita between DPRK and ROK. It’s obviously not that the Korean people or culture are incapable of creating an advanced economy (in this case we have a side by side test showing it, we’re not just politely assuming all nations and cultures are capable of it). ---
**Author:** ![Jungian\_Camisole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8baadc/32.png) [@Jungian\_Camisole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jungian_Camisole)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/37 "2018-04-06T23:52:14Z")
I (very highly) recommend that everyone reads “Without You, There Is No Us” by Suki Kim, in which she tells of her time teaching the sons of the North Korean elites. She also writes about traveling outside of the city and observing what’s actually happening in NK when her minders don’t think she’s looking. Excellent, excellent book. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2018, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853/38 "2018-04-07T06:36:34Z")
As a bit of an aside, has anyone either with inside info inside SK or perhaps an escapee from NK ever offered any insight into what North Koreans think of the fact that Kim is the only fat person in the whole country? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-realpolitik-pov-why-does-the-north-korean-regime-let-their-people-starve/811853.md?page=1)