North Korean Luxury
Posted on Monday, November 1, 2004
What passes for luxurious dining for the police state elite in Pyongyang, you ask?
NKZone: Goat meat restaurants in Pyongyang links to an interesting article from the International Herald Tribune that has the answer:
Eleven restaurants selling goat delicacies have recently opened in Pyongyang, the Yonhap news agency reported Friday, citing Choguk, a Korean-language magazine published in Japan.
The three-story flagship restaurant in downtown Pyongyang sells goat yogurt, goat soup and grilled goat, the report said…
And what’s for dinner for everyone else? Short answer: nothing.
But Pyongyang is the regime’s showpiece. In parts of the countryside and in many inactive industrial areas, the food situation remains dire. “For a country which recently went through a famine, and many of whose youngsters are stunted through malnutrition, Kim’s fussiness about food is particularly misplaced,” Breen said .
Although the famines of the mid-1990s are over, malnutrition remains rampant.
On a visit to Seoul this week, James Morris, of the United Nations World Food Program, told the JoongAng Daily that 7-year-old boys in North Korea are on average 20 centimeters, or eight inches, shorter than South Korean boys of the same age. They are also 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, lighter.
Large numbers of North Korean defectors now cite hunger, rather than political repression, as their reason for leaving the North.
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It’s good to see American commercialism has a larger influence than I thought in foreign countries
That should be a national outrage — it’s no wonder why every generation a new leader screams for the equality of socialism when you hear stories of the corrupt and rich, or the new entrepreneur taking advantage of a situation filled with moral disregard.
If I had more money, more power, and easier travel, I’d be the first to happily put that food where it’s needed, then take a flame thrower to that place.