Most international aid groups estimate that that famine has killed 2 million to 3 million North Koreans since 1995. Intelligence officials and defectors say thousands of North Koreans are now migrating from one part of the country to another, looking for food. Armed soldiers keep them from leaving North Korea altogether. Refugees who manage to cross the border into China tell horrific stories of starvation. Millions of people live with little electricity or food in remote towns.
Satellite photos taken at night show a land with virtually no electricity outside the capital.
Indian economist Amartya Sen, in an interview during a recent visit to Seoul, said that despite fears that emergency food aid may be diverted to the military or the elite, cutting it will only hurt the hungry. Any idea that stopping it will weaken the regime is not true. Dictatorial regimes are not strengthened by sending food or weakened by not sending it. They can take a lot of beating of their population. But as Perry weighs how to proceed, critics abound.