How North Korea cured obesity

Well of course they did: Olympian Declares That North Korea Is One of the Few Countries That Has Tackled Obesity

James Cracknell is a British athlete and two-time gold medal Olympian. But now he has his sights set on politics. His pet issue? Tackling obesity.

Yes, you heard that right. Cracknell told Sky News this morning that he believes Cuba and North Korea are shining examples of countries that have tackled the obesity problem.

“If you think of the two countries in the world who’ve got a handle on obesity, what do you think they are, which two countries?” Cracknell asked a Sky News presenter.

“I’m stumped there, I don’t know,” the presenter said.

“North Korea and Cuba,” Cracknell said proudly.

The presenters all take a moment to wait for the punchline or something and then kind of politely agree before realizing that he’s serious. Cracknell insists that these dictatorial regimes influence “behavioral change.”

“Yeah, but people are starving in North Korea, aren’t they. They’re not obese because they haven’t got any food,” another presenter chimes in, trying to inject some sanity into the conversation.

"Behavioral change?" You know, like this: How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea.

When North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died of a coronary this weekend [in 2011- DS] after 17 years in power, the homuncular tyrant left his country much as he found it -- poor and desperately hungry.

For the last two decades, North Korea has grappled with food crisis upon food crisis, the result of a dysfunctional government and its erratic leader. In 1994, the year Kim inherited North Korea's reins from his late father, the country was in the midst of a severe agricultural decline. The newly minted despot transformed it into a famine that would claim as many as three million lives. Food shortages have plagued the country ever since.

It begs the question: How did one man starve a nation of roughly 23 million people? The answer: By clinging to a broken economic system designed to do little but ensure his own survival.

Old news, one might say? Here is the LA Times from just March of last year:  North Korea tells its people a new famine may come, they again may need to 'eat the roots of grass'

This week, an official mouthpiece of the North Korean state made what appears to be the country’s first acknowledgment that it is preparing for worsening economic conditions.

“We may have to go on an arduous march, a time when we will again have to eat the roots of grass,” said an editorial in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. ...

For decades, North Koreans have lived in poor conditions while their government has poured huge sums into weapons development, and the state has used the language of collective sacrifice when selling tough times to the populace.

Here are some examples of North Koreans who have undergone behavior change to cure their obesity (link); the photos were taken by a British photographer who broke so many rules that he has been banned for life from re-entering the country.

Only the nation's elites are allowed to live in the capital of Pyongyang. There are two supermarkets in the city, open only to the politically favored and westerners.

But Olympian Cracknell is right. The North Korean people have certainly been "behavior changed" out of obesity. And out of cancer, heart disease, the infirmities of old age. And liberty, freedom of conscience and of religion, and of hope for their future. Because when you're dead, your behavior has been changed pretty effectively.

Related:

Communism didn't fail the people, the people failed it

More photos from North Korea