Dandong (AsiaNews) - People dying while working in factories, exhausted from hunger; policemen stealing food from the people; lack of food, starvation: while world leaders discuss the food problem at the FAO summit, the population of North Korea faces an unprecedented decimation.  The annual famine, together with the disastrous flooding last year, has made food impossible to find in the regime headed by Kim Jong-il.  According to South Korean non-governmental organisations, the only groups still allowed to bring necessities to the north, 800,000 have already died from hunger.

The situation is especially harsh for workers in the munitions industry, who are required by rules of military secrecy never to leave their place of work.  The government has provided so little food for these factories that, since April, about three factory workers have been dying each day.  One source, anonymous for reasons of safety, recounts: "In the district of Kandong-gun, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, there is no one left: the people are dying from hunger after seven days with no food at all".

In the military factories, he explains, "ordinary workers in local cities can get by through trades in the jangmadang [editor's note: illegal markets run by farmers, who use bartering to try to survive], but the situation for the munitions factories’ workers is different. They have to go to work due to strong governmental regulation of the munitions factories. Therefore, they cannot help but rely on the food distribution system, and they don’t have any other way to survive without it".

In the area around the capital, there are several dozen of these factories, where about 10,000 people work.  But, recounts the source, "there's no more activity from the smokestacks, and the flow of supplies and products has ceased.  When we were able to enter one of the slums where the workers live, we found at least 200 of them completely dazed from hunger. They couldn't even answer to their name".

Another source, one of the military workers of the province of Yangkang, adds: "Here around the border it is still okay, thanks to the generosity of foreigners. But I hear rumours that in inner regions there are many people starving to death. Many parents are no longer able to contact their children who have gone to the capital, and the local communist leaders are not answering their questions".

Besides, it is "very dangerous" to ask the government for anything: the famine is severe, and local communist leaders have no scruples about confiscating supplies and levying fines: "After the central government stopped food distribution", says a North Korean refugee who was able to flee to China and hide in the area of Dandong, "many low-ranking officials have become bandits".

The technique, he recounts, "is very simple: together with police agents, they carry out surprise inspections wherever they choose.  They try to find people who have committed any sort of violation, in order to confiscate their food and cigarettes.  But in this way they are condemning the population to death, and they know it.  For this reason, they have stopped organising public meetings and political indoctrination sessions: they are afraid that angry crowds could erupt into violence".