
Ask a North Korean: what's life like in the army? - yitchelle
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/11/north-korea-army-life-defector-question
======
jkot
There is big difference between elite North Korean army and regular army.
Totalitarian regime would never trust their citizens with guns. Regular army
is basically forced labor camp. Some of them might train shooting, but at
level three shots per week, in heavily guarded area.

Source: my father served in communist army.

~~~
cryoshon
Yeah, this is an important part of the picture as well. In NK, "being in the
army" is basically being a slave.

Maybe some people are siphoned off from the labor pool to be trained in actual
warfare, but most aren't.

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drcode
Whenever I hear about disadvantaged North Koreans, it confuses me how they can
survive- Some of these people say they had never eaten any other food besides
ground corn, even rice was an unobtainable luxury. How is it possible for a
person with that type of diet to remain alive, from just a pure
medical/physiological standpoint?

~~~
cryoshon
There is a rationing system for rice and corn. It's highly unlikely that this
is enough food to live on, so people probably turn to the black market for
food-- but even that is probably quite thin, and extremely expensive.

Eating edible grasses/herbs (even ferns), very weak bone-based soup/tea,
gutter fish, frogs, roadkill, rice roots/tubers, tree bark (the NKs have been
known to make pine bark "cake"), wild mushrooms, oysters/clams (if near the
ocean), wild berries/fruits, lichen, bugs, rats, wild hemp (extremely nutrient
rich and unregulated in NK), and sparrows, all of which are plentiful in NK.
Knowing Koreans, they probably also have family gardens where they grow garlic
and shallots (relatively easy to do), provided that they can retain viable
seeds. I'd imagine that these private gardens are frequently stolen from by
other hungry people, so they may be clandestine a lot of the time. No kimchi,
though-- they can't grow the cabbage.

You see this kind of food pyramid a lot during famines-- most recently, during
the Cambodian genocide but also during the Great Leap Forward in China and the
Holodomor in Ukraine. Scavenging low-density calorie sources from wherever,
with increasingly lowered standards for what constitutes food. The problem
becomes when effectively everyone is scavenging, which leads to sparse finds
and increased calorie usage during harvesting. I assume they have been in this
state of extremely scarce scavengeables for years now.

There's effectively no access to dairy items or fresh fruits from what I can
tell. This probably results in near-endemic calcium deficiency, and is
supported by their tragically reduced heights and high infant mortality.

During the last NK famine in the 90s, there were widespread rumors of
abduction of children for the purpose of cannibalism, and people were told not
to eat meat unless they knew the source. It's tremendously sad.

~~~
ericjang
This is fascinating - do you know what books/articles I can read to learn more
about NK diets?

~~~
cryoshon
My informed conjecture about NK diets is based off of a few survivor accounts
from expats and a lot of background information about NK that I've picked up
over the years, paired with a lot of information I learned about various other
famines via Wikipedia and college. I can't suggest any specific books or
articles though-- too many articles to list, and I wouldn't remember what
factoid came from which article anyway. In general, I just ask a question to
myself, then use the internet to find the answer.

If you want related books to help think about what sorts of things happen
during these times, I'd start with Maus. It's not at all related to NK, but it
captures the desperation and ingenuity of long term crisis.

------
smacktoward
_> The main difficulty conscripts must endure is constant hunger. Soldiers in
the special units are well taken care of but those stationed outside the
capital Pyongyang are only given two or three potatoes a meal, or are fed
solely on raw corn kernels or corn rice... North Korea may be the worst place
in the world to do military service._

I don't doubt it, but it's probably worth noting that those North Koreans
inside the army still live better than those outside it. The official ideology
of the modern North Korean state is _songun_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun)),
"military first," meaning that the military's needs are prioritized when
allocating the nation's extremely scarce resources. (Which makes sense,
considering how critical the army is to maintaining the regime's hold on
power.)

So if soldiers are only getting two potatoes, that doesn't mean that they'll
be looking enviously upon the diets of the civilian population. The civilians
will be having to make do with even less.

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pavlov
_North Korea may be the worst place in the world to do military service._

Eritrea also seems to be solidly in the running for this questionable record:

[http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-
the-w...](http://taskandpurpose.com/eritrea-is-the-last-place-in-the-world-
you-would-want-to-serve-in-the-military/)

~~~
HiYaBarbie
From the article:

 _In the United States, individuals join the military as a way to serve their
country with honor and pursue new career opportunities. But that’s not the
case in Eritrea, where men and women risk their lives and those of their
families just to escape military service._

Both are nation-states though, and both have governments that pass laws and
then punish the masses for disobeying them.

In other words, the people of both countries have rulers, and the main
difference is in the rulers' degree of "benevolence" towards their subjects.

You're fine with your particular government ruling over you because you think
they would never do what Eritrea and North-Korea are doing.

But that's how German people thought before Germany turned into a mass-
murdering Nazi-Germany, so that kind of thinking is clearly misguided.

Any nation-state is just a police state waiting to happen. Then it does
happen, and years or decades pass until tyranny subsides, and then people go
back to "it could never happen here!"

How crazy is that?

~~~
SEJeff
I guess if you're more of an Anarchist, you could go to Somolia, or
Afghanistan, parts of both are considered fallen states with no actual
government.

~~~
HiYaBarbie
Are you trying to make an argument? What is it?

------
brixon
"Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches
shorter than their South Korean counterparts"

Diet early in life has the determination if you are going to have a stunted
growth. By the time you finish high school you are about as tall as you are
going to be.

~~~
spikels
You can also get stunted growth if your mother is malnourished during
pregnancy or even before. In fact, it can take several generations for the
effects malnourishment to be eliminated.

~~~
Spooky23
My grandparents and granduncles were all Irish farmers who immigrated after
WW2. None were over 5'9\. From photographs, it appears that their parents were
noticeably shorter. None of the males of my generation is under 6', and most
are > 6'2". None of the females are shorter than 5'8" or so.

------
jeremyt
Also related, I have a friend that runs a nonprofit to try to get information
about the outside world into North Korea. Running a fundraiser currently:
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-
freedom#/s...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/6-000-miles-to-
freedom#/story)

------
niklasni1
> Thanks to these diets, North Korean soldiers are said to be several inches
> shorter than their South Korean counterparts

If people join after high-school, how does that work?

~~~
drcode
They starve even before their military service- The only reason this comes up
for the military is because soldiers from both sides appear near each other on
the borders, making the height comparison easy.

~~~
marme
south korea specifically picks only tall soldiers to stand guard at the
border. They do it on purpose to intimidate the north koreans. It is consider
special duty in south korean army and you must be hand picked. The US does
this shit too, to be a flag bearer or part of official honor guard you must be
over 6 feet tall

~~~
pavlov
So why wouldn't North Korea do the same?

