preview

The North Korean Famine

Good Essays
Open Document

North Korea has been receiving financial support from the United Nations as well as food supplies. Many people would claim that North Korea has an ongoing famine due to the floods they would continuously experience throughout the years, damaging the soil. Others would argue and say that the famine happened because North Korea is a communist country and the military is purposefully starving their people. Regardless of these arguments, the fact still remains, the people of North Korea are dying rapidly due to malnutrition. The only solution feasible to this problem would be to send agricultural scientists over to North Korea and help restore the damaged soil, so that it may grow healthy crops once again. North Korea is facing a dangerous famine …show more content…

The reason for this, is because it will cost millions of dollars to try and restore even a portion of the land in North Korea. According to Phil McKenna, “North Korean scientists told the delegates that they would like to reforest hillsides with trees, including the Japanese chestnut, black chokeberry, and Korean pine, that could both stabilize the soil and provide edible fruits and seeds. But funding for such reforestation appears tight”(McKenna 17). The solution is possible, however, it will cost too much to fix. There have been ideas of trying to restore everything back to the way it used to be, but there are insufficient funds to do so. It is cheaper to send North Korea supplies of food and some money, rather than doing something that will benefit all of North Korea. Not to mention the fact this solution is short-term and does not benefit North Korea as much as the previous solution would. Money seems to be the only problem with this solution, “Even if the nurseries were running at full capacity, North Korea would still have a long road ahead of it. Bowers estimates that reforesting even half the country would cost around $46 billion, an amount that exceeds the nation’s annual gross domestic product by $6 billion”(McKenna 17). If Kim Jong-Un were willing to provide their own money into this solution, there would be better soil and crops in North Korea. This solution is not an easy one to overcome, however, it will be worth every penny in the

Get Access