N Korea toiling to boost food output: internal documents
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Tokyo, Oct 23, Kyodo/OANA/IRNA -- North Korea is taking pains to try to boost food production amid the chronic food shortage in the reclusive communist state, according to internal documents obtained by a Japanese nongovernmental organization Saturday. The documents, obtained by the Osaka-based Rescue The North Korean People! Urgent Action Network (RENK), from a North Korean who fled the country earlier this month, are instructions that North Korea` s Cabinet issued to government ministries concerned. RENK said the North Korean defector took photos of the documents -- one dated Jan. 31 this year and another dated Nov. 19 last year -- before his departure from North Korea. Both are marked confidential and have prefaces indicating the instructions were issued by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The former urges the ministries concerned to let factory and office workers cultivate idle land or waste land in order to boost food self-sufficiency. The latter orders the ministries to beef up the capability of collecting taxes with a view to putting the troubled fiscal house in order, saying tax collection must cover income from transactions on the black market or from sideline business. RENK representative Lee Young Hwa, who is also an associate professor at Kansai University, said the food-boosting measures cited by the documents are doomed to failure, adding that the food shortage would only be resolved in an open economy. /2322/1432
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