The coming North Korean famine

North Korea kept control of the country in the last famine because its propaganda machine convinced the isolated and easily manipulated population that the Chinese and South Koreans were facing mass starvation more severe than what they were suffering. Since then, Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea, South Korean radio broadcasts run by North Korean defectors into the North, Chinese merchants doing business in North Korea, and most powerfully South Korean soap opera DVDs sold across the North have exposed the public to the truth and convinced them that their government has been lying to them. They are hungry, while the Chinese and Southern Koreans prosper. This prolonged deprivation and the collapse of the propaganda machine have driven a tenfold increase over the past decade in the number of North Koreans escaping the country. Melanie Kirkpatrick in her powerful new book—Escape from North Korea: the Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad—traces the journey of these refugees and defectors on the underground railroad from North Korea through China to freedom; it was modeled after the underground railroad that moved escaped slaves in the South to the North in the decades before the American Civil War. We also have extensive internal evidence of a breakdown of the North Korean regimes control over the population.