North Koreans Told to Eat Black Swans for Meat, Canada piloting sponsorship program and more NK news — Crossing Borders - Helping North Korean Refugees and Orphans

NORTH KOREANS ARE TOLD TO EAT LESS UNTIL 2025 AND RESORT TO BLACK SWANS FOR MEAT

Amid an emergency food crisis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for full efforts directed at farming and urged his citizens to “tighten their belts” until at least 2025.
The price of some goods has skyrocketed as a result. According to NK News, a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of bananas in North Korea could cost up to $45.
Meanwhile, Rimjing-gang (a Japan-based website operated by North Korean defectors) reported that the central bank in North Korea has been printing money coupons worth about $1 since August, since paper and ink were no longer being imported from China.
A resident from Sinuiju City, which borders China’s Dandong, told Radio Free Asia that “[when] the authorities tell them that they need to conserve and consume less food until 2025...they can do nothing but feel great despair...[some] of the residents are saying that the situation right now is so serious they don’t know if they can even survive the coming winter. They say that telling us to endure hardship until 2025 is the same as telling us to starve to death”.
In response, the North Korean government is promoting the consumption of black swans to help alleviate the crippling food shortage, describing the water bird's meat as “delicious and has medicinal value”.
A black swan centre has recently opened at the Kwangpho Duck Farm in North Korea’s east coast at Jongphyong county. However, the government has remained silent regarding plans to distribute swan meat to its people.

The North Korean government has refused to take responsibility to treat poisoned farmers who had been forced to spray pesticides on crops without protective measures.
According to a resident from a southwest county in North Korea, most North Korean farmers do not even have basic items like work gloves.
It is reported that the government routinely enslaves its citizens for farm work and they perform free labor for prolonged hours due to shortages in farming equipment and vehicles. As a result of prolonged and repeated exposure to pesticides, North Korean farmers develop life-threatening liver diseases, which they may only resort to folk remedies, such as eating a lot of buckwheat and mung beans, for treatment as they cannot afford proper medical treatments.
Even though the doctor of a poisoned farmer from Kangso county in South Pyongan province confirmed that the “many years of mobilisation for pesticide spraying duty was likely the cause of the disease”, the farmers’ fates are sealed as they concluded that “their only reward for all their hard labour is an illness that breaks their bodies”.

According to Daily NK, three team members from North Korea’s Ministry of State Security had been driving a truck laden with documents containing detailed information about defectors who are publicly active in South Korea since 15 October.
The group from Pyongyang also gave instructions to local ministry officials to “inform the defectors’ families of party policy… to unconditionally exclude [the relatives of defectors] who openly engage in malicious propaganda against the Motherland… down to second cousins”.
Local ministry officials were also told to closely watch the families of defectors and continuously report with comprehensive materials once a year based on investigations into the activities of defectors on a so-called “blacklist”.
Since the Ministry of State Security is aware that defectors remain in contact with their families in North Korea, they indirectly warn defectors who live in South Korea by threatening to “execute party policy” on their families based on the number of times the defectors engage in public activities, including appearances on TV programs or Youtube videos.
The trio has reportedly told families of defectors “not to believe everything people who went to the South say when they say they are living well [as] those people are being treated like trash in a trash heap in North Korea”.

A Toronto-based human rights organization, HanVoice, recently created a pilot sponsorship program in partnership with the Canadian government to resettle five North Korean refugee families from Thailand to Canada within the next two years, with a vision that “this can be a spark that opens up new pathways around the world for North Koreans.” Under the new program, Canadian citizens will for the first time be able to privately sponsor North Koreans settling in Canada.
Among the refugees in Thailand, which is a major transit country for North Koreans because it does not repatriate them back to North Korea or China, Canada will prioritize families of North Korean women who have survived or are at risk of sexual and gender-based violence at “the hands of brokers and Chinese husbands that they’ve met along the transit path”, which comprise 80% of all North Korean refugees.
According to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, applicants will need to meet admissibility criteria to enter Canada, including health, criminality and security screening. “Once in Canada, these individuals would be supported by HanVoice for their first year. HanVoice will be responsible for providing emotional and financial support to applicants and their families”. The sponsorship period could be extended to a maximum of 36 months in exceptional cases.