During the famine, train station cleaning staff made rounds with a wooden handcart, collecting bodies from the station floor, wrote Demick. There were widespread rumors of cannibalism, with claims that some children hanging around the station were drugged, killed, and butchered for meat. Although the practice was not widespread, Demick concluded it did occur. “From my interviews with defectors, it does appear that there were at least two cases . . . in which people were arrested and executed for cannibalism.”
