They Won’t Reap What They Sow
Hopeless Crops
One of LFNKR’s local staff members in China took this picture across the border on June 1, 2010. It shows people planting rice seedlings in Namiyan, North Hamgyong, North Korea. Their clothing indicates that they are not farmers but soldiers and urban women who have been assigned to the rice planting job.
Non-farmers pressed into service to plant rice fields
The abnormally cold weather continued in both China and North Korea.
Chinese farmers in Yanji saw those North Korean people planting the rice seedlings and commented that the type of rice they are planting in North Korea is vulnerable to cool summer damage, so it will not survive the coming summer. This means that they are unlikely to reap any of the rice they are planting. Clearly, North Korea does not have the money to switch to a type of rice that is immune to cold summer.
Meanwhile however, the farmers in Yanji, China have switched to seedlings that resist cold summer temperatures, even though the taste is considered inferior to the rice they conventionally grow. This new type of rice comes from Heilongjang, to the north of Yanji.
The farmers were amazed to see the North Koreans totally wasting their energy planting the hopeless rice seedlings.