N.Korea completely cuts off state rations: aid group

10 N.Koreans may face death in prison camps: group
Seoul (AFP) June 14, 2010 - A group of 10 North Korean former refugees could face death in the communist country's prison camps after being deported by China, rights campaigners said on Monday. The two men in their 50s or 60s and eight women in their 20s and 30s were caught hiding in the Chinese border city of Dandong and sent home on June 3, said the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. The group said the former refugees, who hoped eventually to come to South Korea, would end up in the North's prison camps. "In these camps, it is a matter of course that prisoners get beaten and tortured, pregnant women are forced to have an abortion, and new-born infants are killed in front of their mothers," it said in a statement.

"Moreover, many prisoners cannot bear malnutrition and intensive labour and die. There have been occasions on which 20-30 people have died in a day." The rights group gave no further details on those deported. Seoul's National Intelligence Service could not immediately confirm the case. Most refugees cross into China, where they face forced repatriation if caught. Many travel on to Southeast Asian nations in the hope of eventual resettlement in South Korea. About 18,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the 1950-1953 war, the vast majority in recent years. The rights group urged members of the public to appeal for the group's safety and release by writing to the North's ambassador to the United Nations.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) June 14, 2010
North Korea has completely cut off state food rations after China failed to supply the impoverished communist country with extra cereals, a welfare group said Monday.

The ruling communist party announced in a directive on May 26 that there would be no state rations for a while, said South Korea's Good Friends group which has contacts in the North.

People were authorised to buy food supplies through private markets, it said, adding the directive was due to delayed shipments of food from China.

"The directive was unavoidable" because China failed to send the aid which had been anticipated after leader Kim Jong-Il's trip to Beijing in early May, group president Pomnyun, who uses just one name, told reporters.

Private markets are now open around the clock across the North, he said.

The North suffered famine in the mid-1990s which killed hundreds of thousands and it still grapples with severe food shortages. The UN children's fund estimates one third of children are stunted by malnutrition.

The state food distribution system collapsed during the famine. Free markets sprang up and were condoned for a time.

Since 2005 the regime has been reasserting its grip on the economy, with controls or outright bans on the private markets.

A currency revaluation last November, designed to flush out entrepreneurs' savings, backfired disastrously, fuelling food shortages as market trading dried up and sparking rare outbreaks of unrest.

The North was forced to suspend its campaign to curb the private markets.

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S.Korean government website hit by cyber attacks
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