Sending in the Choco Pies

January 29, 2012 North Korea, Public Awareness, Relief Work, Starvation

Help Send Choco Pies of Love for Valentine’s Day

Choco pies have become the most famous snacks among North Korean workers in Kaeson Industrial Park (see details below), but outside this one limited area, the rest of North Korea has little idea of the everyday luxuries available to the rest of the world.

So LFNKR has decided to launch a campaign to send a large shipment of the chocolate pies (actually snack cake/cookie treats) to needy people in North Korea.

We plan to distribute the Choco Pies through our clandestine local distribution network and also by balloon airlift. One box of South Korean chocolate pies contains 12 pieces and costs about 300 Japanese yen (about $4.00 USD). The treats symbolize for them a touch of freedom and a better life, an end to starvation.

Choco Pies

For years we have been supporting the poor of North Korea physically, by delivering rice, corn, clothes and first aid supplies.

This time, however, we want to do something to nurture their hearts by sending them a pleasant surprise to help lift their spirit.

All donations received through February 14 will be used to deliver the Choco Pies of love directly to the North Korean people. Note – No intervening official agencies will be involved.

Here’s the Idea

Maybe – just maybe – it’s time to lighten up for a moment or two on the North Korean topic?

Sure, conditions are terrible, and awful things are being done by a regime that remains brutal beyond belief.

But what if, instead of playing “ain’t it awful” all the time, and decrying the terrible situation, which we’ve all done plenty of, what if we tried to do something to express warmth, love and solidarity with the North Korean people themselves? Not to the government – to the people.

Something like sending in a truckload of Valentine treats?

Marshmallow filling and chocolate coating

We already know what the North Koreans like. Reports are all over the Internet about the Choco Pie craze in that country’s industrial park. In this limited area, just inside North Korea, South Korean companies hire NK workers, and as a small bonus they hand out snack treats.

Every day, some 40,000 North Korean workers in the Kaesong Industrial Complex are being served 150,000 Choco Pies. So popular have they become that they’re now highly prized and go for premium prices when they become available.

Of course, some of those Kaesong workers, being enterprising souls, are taking the snack cakes home and bartering them – or selling them outright – for considerable profit. Everybody seems to want them. In fact, the price per pie (according to some reports) has reached as high as $9.50 USD. This may be an exaggeration, however, since other reports suggest it’s closer to one dollar per cake, the equivalent of one or two kilograms of rice.

Still, that’s a big profit, since the original market price is around 25-30 cents per piece.

In any case, the very presence of the famous Choco Pie infatuation has become galling to NK officials, including Kim Jong-il himself before his death. Efforts have been made to stamp out the snack cakes because they are seen as an infiltration of South Korea’s “corrupting” influence into the north.

So we at LFNKR, in a one-time project, would like to ship in a major load of the snack cakes as a statement directly to the people of North Korea saying, “We wish you happiness and joy.”

But to do this, we’ll need your help. Below are donation buttons. Any monies received via PayPal up until Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day) will go directly to the Choco Pie project.

We believe it could be a good morale booster for the people of North Korea, letting them know that the world is very much aware of their struggles, and that we care. In addition, it can give them a small taste of the kind of daily pleasures that their own government is incapable of providing for them.

And if the NK government were to see the Choco Pies as some kind of insult… well, that’d just be icing on the cake… so to speak.

Best regards,
The LFNKR Team

Make Your Special Choco Pie Donation Here