Improving lives in North Korea
A UN report concludes that 27.9% of the children of North Korea suffer from chronic malnutrition, and that 70 percent of the population of 25 million people do not get a healthy and varied diet. The food crisis is worsened by climate changes creating droughts at spring time and heavy rains and typhoons during the summer period, leading to heavy flooding.
Mission East is one of less than 20 NGOs world-wide that are active in North Korea. I have just returned from my sixth trip to the closed country where the poor rural population is fighting to stay alive. – Many North Koreans survive on rice and kimchi, Chinese cabbage that they keep in underground holes during the winter months when cabbage forms the basis of their diet. Usually, they never eat meat or eggs nor drink milk. They source proteins from soy beans, but when the harvest of soy beans fails, they do not get enough proteins. Therefore, many North Koreans supplement their diet by collecting seaweed from the ocean or herbs and mushrooms in the forest. It is particularly painful to see how this situation affects the many children suffering the effects of long term malnutrition.
But the help from Mission East makes a difference.
- Since the spring of 2011 we have provided food supplements to almost 50,000 children and saved many of them from certain death. We have erected more than 500 houses after floods. And we are now engaged in a long term agricultural project aiming to help the North Koreans become more self-sufficient with foodstuffs.
Among other institutions, Mission East supports a children’s institution in the southern town of Haeju: a baby home where many of the children are orphans. Here I witnessed many of the children having recovered from periods of severe malnutrition, having received food supplements with vitamins, proteins and minerals from the UN and Mission East. We have also provided playground equipment enabling the children to catch up on motoric skills.
Please help us continue this life-saving work in North Korea.
Kim Hartzner, MD, Managing Director
Tung Chung Chi is a 31-year old woman living with her husband and her two-year old son in a house constructed with help from Mission East. Until July 29th 2012 she lived in a small house near the nearby river, but the entire house was washed away during the heavy typhoon on that day, along with all the other 19 houses in her small village of Soni. At the very last moment Mrs Chi managed to escape to a nearby hill from where she could see the water sweeping away everything her family had owned. Some of her neighbours lost their lives.
After the flood she lived 40 days in a tent, and then moved to stay with some relatives until the house constructed with help from Mission East was finished in March 2013. It is a house of 60 square meters. About her house, Mrs Chi says: “I am really proud to show my house to my family. I had never dreamt of having such a nice house.”
