<<Nothing to Envy>>

The second English review.This time I wil tell the story of Mrs. Song during the famine of North Korea 1995-1998.By 1998,an estimated 600,000 to 2 million North Koreans had died as a result off the famine,as much as 10 percent of the population.When the public distribution system was cut off,people were forced to tap their deepest wells of creativity to feed themselves.They tried all possible ways to find everything from everywhere,including picking kernels of undigested corn out of the excrement of farm animals.Even if something isn't nutritious,it is filling.Boiling noodles for at least an hour to make them appear bigger.At that time, all ingenuity was devoted to the gathering and production of food.So people were finding food all day,from breakfast to supper.But ultimately it was not enough.

For Mrs. Song,nobody in the family had gotten paid since the Great Leader's death .Mrs. Song knew it was time to put aside scruples and make money.But how?Her family reminded her of her talents in the kitchen and urged her to make her first stab at business in the kitchen and that best product would be tofu,a good source of peotein in difficult times.In oerder to raise the money to buy soybean,the family startede selling their possession.When everything was ready,they realized it was becoming increasingly difficult to get wood and coal to fuel the stove.So their business had to be quitted.The family also decided to eat grass.By the year of 1995,Mrs. Song and her husband  had sold most of their valuable possessions for food.The only thing left to sell was the apartment itself.Eventually they sold their apartment and they moved to a single room with her mother-in-law.

to be continued!