In our own time, the most ruthless regimes still produce the most horrific conditions. Jang Jin-sung, a member of North Korea’s élite, described what he saw in the late 1990s, before he fled to the West. The starving were sent to parks to beg until they died. A special ‘Corpse Division’ would poke at bodies with sticks to see if they were already dead. He saw them loading corpses on a rickshaw, on which bare and skeletal feet poked out in odd directions. In a crowded market, Jang saw an adult woman and a girl of about seven. The woman had hung a sign around the girl’s neck: ‘I will sell my
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