This is a weird one. Bear with me. From !dataisbeautiful@lemmygrad.ml:
So I said to myself, “that’s a little bit weird. The US one going up, I can actually believe, but the North Korea one being lower is definitely wrong.”
I think Our World In Data is just being shoddy, as they often do.
https://www.wfp.org/countries/democratic-peoples-republic-korea
The thing I found funny, and why I’m posting here, comes from observing why it was that they started their graph at 2003 and exactly at 2003.
I feel like you could use this as a slide in a little seminar in “how to curate your data until it matches your conclusion, instead of the other way around.”
And also, I don’t think the hunger rate suddenly dropped from epic to 0 exactly in 2003, I think more likely Our World in Data is just a little bit shoddy about their data.
This article talks about the global famine relief effort for North Korea in 2002 that included monitoring so food actually went to people.
https://asiasociety.org/famine-north-korea
So yes, I believe it could have gone from epic to 0 in one year because most of the developed world came together and shipped food to North Korea.
And it’s still shameful that it’s increasing in the US.
But… it’s very rare that sustained international intervention into a basically hostile country to solve a decades-long issue ever even works the way it’s supposed to in the first place, let alone reduces the problem it was trying to address from “crisis” to “totally nonexistent” within the space of one year.
Here are some other stats about hunger in North Korea over time:
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/PRK/north-korea/hunger-statistics
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Trends-of-chronic-malnutrition-among-North-Korean-children-by-year_fig2_322157603
I am sure there is variation by how you measure things, which is why those graphs look radically different, but my point is that they don’t shoop down to 0 all of a sudden in one year and then stay there.
My suspicion is that it stopped being possible to get good data in 2003, for some reason, and they just fell back on horrible data instead, which is why the sudden discontinuous change that’s at odds with all the other data sources I could find.
Agreed. And that probably does correspond to actual desperate poverty.
Of course, not the NK lying.
You fell for their propaganda.
The propaganda is that they asked for food, the developed world sent it with monitors to ensure it went to people and then they said it helped?
No, that the problem just vanished like that, contrary to the sparse information coming out of NK, where everyone except Kim is more or less malnourished.
You seriously believe the NK data?
I believe the link I provided which was an international relief effort with monitoring and the other links provided by others that showed food was delivered and reached people. It didn’t drop to 0 immediately but it did lower.
Why would Kim exaggerate the benefits of Western aid?
I didn’t say kim exaggerated western aid, why do you say that?
The NK regime just lies to look strong and not feeble, a classic from dictators.
What we know about NK is that they are struggling with food today.
No way to be sure. We can be sure that US propaganda will always say DPRK is terrible, and China is about to collapse, and we know it just lies to look strong and not feeble. a classic.