“My little sister went to kindergarten then, and she occasionally collapsed just while walking on the street. Then one day even her eyesight started deteriorating. She could not see anything at night. She could not even pick up her rice bowl. My mother could not do anything but shed tears looking at her, and my father did not know because, as always, he was always away (with the military) and busy with work”.
“My friends and I went out to hills and an open field nearby, and collected shepherd’s purse, a herb known to be good for night blindness. My kindhearted friends poured the shepherd’s purse they collected all day long, which could have made a decent dinner soup for their hungry families, into my basket. However, even the kindness of my friends could not save my little sister. There was no progress in her condition, and my mother finally wrote a letter to my father who eventually managed to get pig’s liver and sent it to my mother. She steamed it and fed it to my sister with salt, and fortunately it worked. My sister gradually recovered her eyesight”.
Liver is high in vitamin A which is good for your eyes, just FYI.
“In my hometown, there was a little girl named Soon Yi… Because she was 4 years old, the same age as my own little sister then, I was a bit attached to her. Then, one day, I woke up and heard the sad news that she had died. Her mother passed away when she was still a baby and her father was the only one who could find something to feed her. However, at that time, it was not easy to find food”.
“Because of the long-lasting famine, it was very competitive to find anything edible. When you went out to the mountains, plenty of people were already competing to dig out some edible herbs. Farmland was another battlefield to dig out the rice roots remaining in the soil… People dug out the rice roots that remained after reaping, and they ground them into powder and made porridge or maybe some noodles. Though not as good as the fruits, the roots still have some useful nutrients inside. Food made from rice root tasted so awful, though, that for the first time in my life, I realized that some food is tasteless even for starving people”.
☛ Next: Inside North Korea: Unbelievable Excerpts From UN Report #2
