The areas most devastated by the famine were the highlands, particularly in the remote northeast. These areas are unsuitable for rice and corn farming, but those crops were nonetheless planted there, depleting the already poor soils. Potatoes, however, grow best in cool climates, flourish in poor soils, can tolerate bad weather and unskilled farming, and, provided potato blight does not strike, produce more calories per acre than do grains. Others warned that tampering with a population's eating habits could be politically risky, even for a totalitarian regime. Imagine the fallout if Americans were told they could no longer expect to eat hamburgers.
Rice only goes to the elite. . . .
This is quite different from his father's point of view. While his father was in power, Kim was widely portrayed as an unstable playboy who once ordered the kidnapping of a South Korean film director whose work he admired. Spud Aid North Korea experts say they do not know who put the potato bug in Kim's ear. Washington took note too, and when U.S. diplomats were trying to persuade officials in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to allow inspections of suspicious underground tunnels at Kumchangri that the West worried might be a nuclear weapons site, they dangled potato aid as compensation for an inspection. The deal was struck, and in March, the State Department announced that it would, for the first time, allow private U.S. volunteer organizations to raise money and provide North Korea with high-quality seed potato as well as food for the workers who plant and raise the crop.