Consider:

• The ruling dynasty rejected the use of private gardens. 70% of the population was moved to rural areas but strictly forbidden from growing private food.
• The military had always survived by taking a share of the country's crops. But just before the famine hit hard, the government extended the length of military service from 7 to 13 years, and added females to the ranks, creating a monstrously large army with an equally monstrous tenure. Soldiers were sent to the fields to -forcibly - grab the harvest. Rural households were starved out.
• The government did everything to prevent people from finding other ways to feed themselves. It said in 1996, at the height of the starvation: " Telling people to solve the food problem on their own only increases the number of farmers' markets and peddlers..."
• Party officials were told to crack down hard on any kind of commercial activity. Those who reacted and rebelled, as in Musan, were arrested. In that unfortunate city, 200 men and women who saw the light of truth about the government went to jail, and a dozen were executed in public. Because NK's leaders refused to hear their cries for common sense, half of the town's 130,000 people died or ran, according to refugees' later stories.
• One thing that was allowed, and even promoted, was the use of so-called "alternative foods". The poor and dying people of Chosun were told to collect roots, bark, seaweed, husks, and cobs to make food. Problem. These "food substitutes" were not food. They had no caloric value. People died of blocked digestive tracts when this dense matter, never meant to be eaten, clogged their system. One of the worst features of this whole period is the way the NK media bragged about what it was doing to save its people from the American ogre. But in fact, the Korean people have known what and how to eat for millennia. How tragic that government misinformation was allowed to suck them in and destroy them.

Forgiveness is built into our blood as believers in Jesus. We must be ready to forgive even the grossest of sins committed against us or our Korean family members. But at this point, no one in leadership seems to be asking for such forgiveness. No one is admitting to the watching millions of Earth that anything incorrect has been done.