经济学人下载:朝鲜的饥荒,让他们吃玉米皮

Hunger in North Korea
朝鲜的饥荒

Let them eat maize husks
让他们吃玉米皮

The politics of hunger in a brutal place
野蛮之地的饥荒政治

May 12th 2011 | SEOUL | from the print edition

IT IS the time of year when the previous harvest has been nearly eaten and the next one has just been planted. Time, in other words, to worry about North Korea’s perennially hungry masses.

现在是那种青黄不接的时候。换句话说，是为朝鲜长期存在的吃不上饭的平民感到焦虑的时候了。

North Korea had long grown dependent on food handouts from its estranged brother, South Korea, and from the United States. But the South’s current president, Lee Myung-bak, has taken a tougher line, tying assistance to less provocative behaviour by Kim Jong Il’s nuclear-tipped regime. So Mr Kim’s envoys have travelled further afield of late, reportedly doing the rounds of Europe.

长期以来，朝鲜依赖失和的兄弟——韩国——和美国的救济。但是，韩国现任总统李明博采取了强硬路线，要想得到救助，金正日亲核政权就必须变得更加温和。所以，最近金正日的特使不远万里，据报道现在欧洲进行活动。

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is now preparing to distribute emergency aid to 3.5m North Koreans suffering from “severe malnutrition”. Programme officials are concerned about the possibility of a famine on the scale of the one in the mid-1990s, in which over 1m died. They blame a series of shocks, including the coldest winter in years, widespread flooding and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock. Some 297,000 tonnes of cereal and 137,000 tonnes of fortified blended food must reach the most vulnerable.
 
联合国世界粮食计划署正准备对350万经受“严重营养不良”的朝鲜人发放紧急救援。计划署官员们担心上世纪90年代中期导致100多万人死亡的饥荒可能再次发生。他们认为一系列的冲击——包括数年严冬、肆虐的洪水、牲畜的口蹄疫爆发是导致饥荒的主要原因。约297000吨谷物以及137000吨加强的混合食品必须送达那些最脆弱的人们。