A DECADE after a famine killed 500,000-1m people in North Korea, recent news from the benighted country suggests it is once again on the brink of mass starvation. The state food distribution system seems to have broken down everywhere, including the capital, Pyongyang, which usually gets special treatment from Kim Jong Il's regime. In the absence of public distribution, North Koreans rely increasingly on informal or illegal markets for grain. There, a new paper by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (IIE) in Washington argues.

via economist.com

The Juche Idea (also Juche Sasang or Chuch'e; pronounced /tɕutɕʰe/ in Korean, approximately "joo-cheh") is the official state ideology of North Korea and the political system based on it. Kim Jong-il has explained that the doctrine is a component part of Kimilsungism, after its founder Kim Il-sung. The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the master of everything and decides everything". The official biography Kim Il Sung by Baik Bong had previously described this as saying that the masters of the North Korean revolution are the Korean people, who must remake themselves under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea. Juche literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance".

 

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