Talk:North Korean famine

message: Because several editors have pointed out the lack of references and obvious bias in the essay by Shultz IV, I've moved his content here for now. I've replaced the article page with content from North Korea, Kim Jong-il, and Famine articles, to serve as a stub.
Shultz IV, please re-add any part of the below after you add references and subtract the commentary. thanks. Appleby 15:39, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Shultz IV's commentary

message: There was no "aftermath", people, because it didn't end. Actually it is potentially worse than ever! 
Sometimes Wikipedia is a total joke. Articles about some unimportant people are longer than the fate of millions right now. --84.234.60.154 (talk) 08:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If the famine never ended, and was worse than ever, by now the population would be virtually extinct.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:38, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: WHAT

message: I can't belive it is TOTALLY IGNORED. --84.234.60.154 (talk) 20:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  THIS SHOULD BE ONE OF HOTTEST EDITED ARTICLES RIGHT NOW 

message: Pleace use external links I provided while re-writting this joke of an article. --84.234.60.154 (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears you, 84.234.60.154 (talk), are the best editor to improve this article. You are not prevented from doing the text editing and thinking necessary to make the article say what it should. Templates are a form of complaint, not contribution. Just do it. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 02:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article overlaps partly with Economy of North Korea#Crisis and famine.--Banana (talk) 22:39, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  To whoever who would make a real article 

message: I have found no explanation in the article about the meaning of the term "Arduous March". The sentence in Schultz IV' commentary above, "As a result, 200,000-1.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have died in what they call the "Arduous March".", is not very enlightening; why was a famine called a march? --Enaskitis (talk) 09:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added an explanation and history of the term. Coinmanj (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  No explanation for the term "Arduous March" 

message: The list of external links in the article was just ridiculous. Rather than just delete them I am moving them here for future reference: PC78 (talk) 23:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: collapsing --Banana (talk) 22:38, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: I was redirected from march of tribulation...what does this mean? surely a reason for the redirect?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.122.13.129 (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  march of tribulation 

message: In an attempt to shorten the article Economy of North Korea I have moved 2 sections (black market activities and the Public Distribution System) into this article since they deal directly with the famine. The shortened "crisis" section of the Economy article now is more summarized and has a link to this article. Coinmanj (talk) 09:12, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  New sections 

message: Should a new section be made about the recent deaths that have occurred in the past year or so? There isn't mention of the current estimations in the right info box, as far as the article 'North Korean Famine' is concerned, it ended in 1998. The estimation of 10,000-20,000 deaths is pretty steep, I think it merits its own section seeing how when a small plane crashes with 3 people on board it gets its own article. Thoughts? 
Johnsmithy678 (talk) 02:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a good idea to me. bobrayner (talk) 11:16, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

text: I'd vote for that too.SylviaStanley (talk) 13:17, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that every so often some media outlet runs a story, with very little evidence, saying, "Famine has returned!", or something like that. The World Food Program, and others who are looking at the situation in the long term, do not say that.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:55, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also the article at the academic 38north, which says things were confusing this year starting with a drought then rain, causing a "lack [of] clear-cut answers" but in the end his assessment is: "food production is still better than it has been in past years". I didn't think it was clear-cut enough to be a useful source, except perhaps his handy table of FAO data covering 2008-2015. Rwendland (talk) 17:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that a sensationalist claim ends up getting into the article, but a balanced, reasoned analysis doesn't. We also should avoid the fallacy of equating food production with food consumption. Many commentators out-Juche North Korea by presuming that the country should be self-sufficient in food. It doesn't actually have much arable land. You have to look at the economy as a whole. If North Korea expanded its mineral exports (for example), it could import more food etc.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:41, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Ongoing starvation as a new section?

message: This article minimises the impact of the floods (even more so, before I edited it), but most sources say that the floods did have a large impact. (The collapse of the Soviet bloc is also important, of course.) This article mentions economic mismanagement but doesn't explain why this mismanagement would have come to a head in the 1990s.
The citation of Daniel Schwekendiek has been tagged as dubious since 2013. I have located his article, which is based on child height data, and this is the relevant sentence in his conclusion: "Interestingly, the North Korean government's official explanation for the famine—the floods—is not verified here, since the living standards in the previously flood-affected counties were not significantly worse than in the unaffected ones." This assumes that the effect of the floods was localised, which seems to be false. What about flooding of coal mines and damage to hydro-electric dams? The effect of that kind of damage would go across the economy, particularly as it is centralised, and would not necessarily have any impact on the nutrition of nearby children. I will amend the article to reflect what he actually concluded, but I feel the article might be giving undue weight to one study.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved information about the immediate flood damage to infrastructure into the "Floods" section. It makes no sense to separate the floods from their immediate impact.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Floods 

message: Many deaths were related to the cold in winter, but this isn't mentioned.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:01, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on North Korean famine. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070714092016/http://www.globalpolicy.org///socecon/hunger/relief/2005/0520nkorea.htm to http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/relief/2005/0520nkorea.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 16:54, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Background section has two paragraphs about famines in the 1950s (the first one associated with the Korean War). I think this is unnecessary and misleading.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:50, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There being no objections, I've now removed them.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  1950s 

message: According to this , the quotation came from an article entitled "Chosun's Supreme Power", that wasn't translated into English, and the quotation was: "The path to the revolution is never easy, we might have to go through Arduous March again – in which we only had to eat roots of the grass – and we might have to fight against our enemies all by one’s self". It appears to be a passing comment, the implication of which out of keeping with the general thrust of articles published by Rodong Sinmun , which features articles like "Nobody Can Block DPRK's Advance": "High-rise apartment houses will spring up in Ryomyong Street like mushrooms after rain before long through self-reliance and self-development. This represents the mode of the struggle of the Korean people to foil the moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and bring earlier a rosy future."--Jack Upland (talk) 04:35, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: According to this — Little Story about How the Media Gets North Korea Wrong — the quotation was: "The road of the revolution is long and tough. There may again be times that call for chewing grass roots during an arduous march, and times that call for fighting the enemy single-handedly on a far-flung island…but we have to keep our single-minded loyalty for our dear marshal to the very end even if it costs our lives…". It seems that the reference was only a phrase used in passing. I will remove it from this article.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:41, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, another fake news about North Korea? Unexpected... emijrp (talk) 10:06, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:19, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another famine? 

message: What is the justification for saying that the famine recommenced in 2002?--Jack Upland (talk) 06:21, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there has been no explanation, I've removed this.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It keeps on being reinstated, but there is no citation, and it is refuted by several reliable sources.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:20, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  2002 

message: Dr. O Grada has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:
We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.
Dr. O Grada has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:
*Reference : Cormac O Grada, 2014. "Fame e Capitale Umano in Inghilterra prima della Rivoluzione Industriale (Hunger and Human Capital in England before the Industrial Revolution)," Working Papers 201403, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 12:39, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, there is no relevant, reliable source that we can use.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:59, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I doubt it would be that hard to demonstrate the 3 million figure is ignored by most relevant scholars. I mean, even The Black Book of Communism only estimates 500,000 famine-related deaths. When I wrote this a long time ago—and keep in mind that I intended that section to be a strong condemnation of the regime, and I might not do it quite the same way today—I cited the same Population and Development Review source mentioned by O Grada: "Estimates based on the North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008." I'm not saying the 3 million figure should be deleted outright, but it would be more informative (if possible) to explain where it comes from—and that most experts find it implausible—than to merely include it in a broad range and call it a day.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:41, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. This article needs a lot of work. The problem is that editors largely rely on sensational media. As I've said elsewhere, if these kind of reports were true the North Korea population would be extinct.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:59, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dr. O Grada's comment on this article 

message: Hazel Smith comments on the UN Human Rights Report:
:The narrative of the report presents the view that nothing much has changed since the famine years, that the health and nutritional status of the population is uniquely awful and government policies guilty of breaching the human right to food of the population at large. The data presented above, however, indicates that this picture is erroneous.(p 27)
Given that Smith's view is backed by several authoritative sources, I think the article should be amended to give a more accurate picture of the current situation. I mean that we should tone down references to starvation, cannibalism etc, and rely on long-term research rather than sensationalist reports.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:35, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added Lankov's article to this article.--Jack Upland (talk) 21:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current Situation 

message: The following was removed with the edit summary "Citations dont actually say what the poster is claiming":
:However, the World Food Program has reported malnutrition and food shortages, but not famine. In 2016 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported a steady decline in the infant mortality rate since 2008. An academic analysis in 2016 found that the situation had greatly improved since the 1990s and that North Korea's levels of health and nutrition were on par with other developing countries. In 2017, the analyst Andrei Lankov argued that previous predictions of a return to famine were unfounded, and that the days of starvation were long since passed.
This is patently untrue. There are a number of citations there, and, while the wording could be modified, the text does reflect the citations. I reinserted the text, but it was removed again with the edit summary "not a usable citation, removed until a relevant one is provided". The UN, a British academic, and a respected analyst of North Korea are not "usable" or "relevant"?--Jack Upland (talk) 13:29, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: There being no response, I have restored the text.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post-famine developments 

message: First of all, I don't understand why this was removed:
"However, life expectancy in North Korea in the mid-1990's during the worst years of the food shortage was still at least seven years higher than Cambodia (a country with a similar or slightly higher gross domestic product than North Korea) and at least two years higher than India (which has a higher GDP)See Demographics of North_Korea#Vital_statistics, Demographics of India#Life_expectancy, and Demographics of Cambodia#Life_expectancy; see also North Korean life expectancy in 1997 (which gives life expectancy for North Korea in 1997 as 65, when it is said to have fallen to its lowest level, compared to 56 for Cambodia, and 61 for India)."
 It was a synthesis of life expectancy data reported by Wikipedia (also including data from Google listing life expectancy on those pages). I believe this is worth stating, although one user complained about it, and reported to administrators.Incogreader (talk) 03:25, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Life expectancy in North Korea was higher in Cambodia and India during the mid-1990s 

message: Hi, I'm tagging you cuz quite a time passed since I added this topic and no one answered. I'll be grateful if you've got some info. Thanks in advance. Ентусиастъ/Entusiast (talk) 10:18, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm wondering the same. Statskvinde (talk) 17:58, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did the famine (which bagan in 1994) bagan before Kim Il-sung's death (July 1994) and if yes, what was his reaction to it?                                                                                                                

message: The only cited source [62] is a Korean Times article, who doesn't list his own sources.
"Most factories in North Korea are non-functioning" is a strong statement, one reporter's offhand comment is insufficient evidence for this claim. The wage amounts also need to be sourced. Listiip (talk) 06:24, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: @Listiip There is a system of bribes in NK but black market is non-existent as everything is controlled by the state. Statskvinde (talk) 18:00, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  that is not true. There is even a term for it: Jangmadang. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:42, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @Finnusertop Lol, ok. Keep coping boyo. Statskvinde (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  re:Black markets 

message: At several points in the article percentages are stated without it being made clear precisely what they are referring to. For instance, women in the workforce is given a percentage of 89%, but it is not clear whether this means that 89% of the workforce is composed of women or 89% of women are members of the workforce. At another point child malnutrition is stated as being at 3%. What does this mean? The 3% of children suffer malnutrition? Surely that figure is higher. Prbedard (talk) 02:16, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentages Not clear  

message: Is North Korea no longer a nation soon 2001:4455:69B:900:B8BF:F1D6:B330:F89E (talk) 03:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is North Korea soon no longer a nation