Peter Wilson: Letter to Dominion Post, 26 December 2011
The media myth that North Koreans eat grass (Tom Scott’s Cartoon Dec. 24)* came about when a Westerner looked out of a hotel window in the mid ‘90s and saw locals scavenging for mushrooms.
It is true that North Korea is short of food. It is not hard to identify the reasons.
Only 15 percent of the country is cultivatable. This, plus the long six month winter when the ground is frozen, means that it is a physical impossibility for the country to grow enough food for the 23 million populace.
Further, the country needs to trade so as to be able to generate an income with which to buy food.
They are prevented from trading however by US instigated physical and financial sanctions. The sanctions are a double whammy. Not only can they not buy food, they can not import seeds, fertiliser and fuel to grow food.
Prior to the collapse of the USSR and the imposition of sanctions, North Korea had the highest rice yields in NE Asia.
Tom Scott should aim his barbs at the inhumane policies which not only prevent North Korea carrying out international trade and buying food but also restrict humanitarian food aid.
Peter Wilson
Agriculturalist with four decades of work on food production in Asia, including stints in North
Dargaville, New Zealand
* The caption reads 'the stocking filler flying off the shelves of North Korea this Christmas' and the picture is of the cover of a book, with Kim Jong Un holding a bowl of grass, whose title is '101 fun ways to cook grass, by new glorious leader Kim Jong Un'