"A world in which we can eat rice and meat soup, which our Great Leader longed for so much, is becoming a reality due to the efforts of our Dear Leader." Those were the words of a North Korean Workers Party propaganda officer during a party lecture on Jan. 2 in Hyesan, Yanggang Province, North Korea. "Rice and meat soup" was Kim Il-sung's slogan for a prosperous socialist society during the 1950s Chollima (Flying Horse) Movement, a state-sponsored movement that mirrored China's Great Leap Forward to promote rapid economic development.

North Korea's economy is in such bad shape now that a party official has to use a 50-year-old slogan to measure progress today. Among North Korean defectors surveyed by the National Human Rights Commission, 58 percent said they had personally witnessed people starving to death in the North. According to a 2007 study by the Korea Peace Institute, the average monthly salary of a North Korean who has lived in South Korea for more than seven years increased steadily from W500,000 in 2001 to W950,000 in 2004 and W1.4 million in 2007 (US$1=W1,337), but that was still only 66 percent of the average monthly salary for South Koreans of W2.11 million. Among North Korean defectors in South Korea, 27.4 percent earned less than half the middle-class salary in the South and lived in poverty, way more than the 18.4 percent for South Koreans.

Yet North Koreans are happier. In a 2007 survey, North Koreans were asked to grade the level of satisfaction they felt with their lives in the categories of physical condition, mental state and social and physical environment. Out of a perfect score of 5, they gave their lives in South Korea a grade of 3.43, more than the 3.27 points South Koreans gave on average. One North Korean defector who came to Seoul in 2003 wrote in his diary, "I thought China, which had no shortage of food, was paradise, but South Korea was heaven." He lived in Hyesan, which is close to China, and would have been aware of the situation outside his country. But he was stunned by the living standards he encountered in South Korea. North Korean defectors say it is at mealtimes that they think most about the family they left behind in the North. Cho Chang-ho, who escaped from North Korea and came to South Korea in 1994, went to a restaurant in Seoul shortly after arriving here. When he was served corn on the cob, he told the server to "take it away immediately." He felt a surge of guilt over the two sons he left behind. In 1977, when he was no longer able to work in the mines due to pneumoconiosis, his sons started growing corn in the mountain behind their home. They ate corn for breakfast, lunch and dinner for more than a decade.

A few days ago, a front page article in the Washington Post focused on the bewilderment North Korean defectors feel while living in South Korea. The report said the greatest wish among North Korean defectors was to have a hot meal including rice with the family they left behind. It said North Korean children cry thinking about their family back home when they are treated to birthday parties.

North Korean defectors are overwhelmed by guilt whenever they eat something delicious. It breaks one's heart to watch North Korea stake everything on developing nuclear weapons and missiles while it continues to ignore its starving people.

By Chosun Ilbo columnist Choi Byung-muk