Squandering National Resources

South Koreans in Seoul watch TV news report on Wednesday's launch of the Unha rocket from Tongchang-ri, North Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

This organization, (Life Funds for North Korean Refugees) strongly protests the missile-launching test that North Korea carried out on Dec. 12, 2012. According to reports, this launch was yet another test of banned ballistic missile technology.

Since its founding in 1998, LFNKR, a Japanese citizen's group, has devoted itself to supplying food, clothing, and medical goods directly to starving North Korean people through our secret local networks. Our local staff in North Korea is reporting that many people in that country still suffer from starvation, and even high-ranking governmental officers in Pyongyang have been receiving greatly reduced supplies of rice since October.

One of the North Korean defectors recently rescued by LFNKR recounted how she had witnessed a soldier at a train station who had died of starvation while trying to return home after completing his military service. The trains can only run for two hours a day due to the electricity shortage, and the soldier ran out of food long before the train was able to get him home.

Despite the serious shortage of food that has brought starvation to so many of its people, the North Korean regime decided to launch this latest long-range rocket. The money spent for this launch would provide food for all the starving people of North Korea for two full years. This is clearly a crime against humanity.

Mr. Marzuki Darusman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in North Korea commented on the statement issued by Kim Jong-un on Dec. 17, 2011 that the country's first second and third priorities were all the strengthening of the military. Mr. Darusman pointed out that the serious human rights violations in that nation are clear crimes against humanity.

We all, as members of the international community, must continue sending a message to the North Korea regime that their military-first policy only impels greater international hostility toward them and ends up undermining their own standing among the nations of the world.

Dec. 13, 2012
Life Funds for North Korean Refugees (LFNKR)

This organization, LFNKR, vows to continue supporting the starving people of North Korea using any approaches available to us.

To that end, we invite you to join us in these humanitarian activities to provide food, medicines, supplies and clothing for the starving victims in North Korea.

Please click here to go to our donation page. You can make a real difference to people who have no other hope.