Food poisoning has been a serious problem in North Korea this winter season due to food shortages and poor supplies of electricity, Daily NK has learned.
“In Hyesan, people think of food poisoning like the common cold,” a source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Food poisoning is always with us, regardless of the season, but many people came down with it during the recent string of holidays.”
This year, the Lunar New Year holiday and the Day of the Shining Star fell a week apart. As a result, many people saved some of the food they prepared for the Lunar New Year to use during Kim Jong Il’s birthday celebration.
However, the food often spoiled because people could not store it in refrigerators or freezers due to the lack of electricity. People ate it anyway because they did not want to throw it out, which resulted in food poisoning, the source said. As a result, the price of antidiarrheals, antibiotics, and saline drips shot up by a factor of one and a half during the holiday season.
“People saved and ate the leftover New Year’s dumplings, fried foods, rice cakes, and side dishes for the Day of the Shining Star. Even though the food went bad, people ate it anyway because they didn’t want to throw it away, and everyone – young and old – came down with food poisoning,” the source said. “The food goes bad because people can’t keep it in the freezer because there’s no electricity.”
“Food vendors also set the number of meals they sell per day. They don’t make more than that, and if they have leftovers, they pay families with freezers to store them, but that’s not enough because the electricity situation is not good,” the source said. “Even households with gasoline or diesel generators need good basic electricity to use freezers.”
In Hyesan, where temperatures have barely risen above freezing in the past month, food poisoning outbreaks do not appear to be related to food spoilage due to the limited use of refrigerators or freezers. The cause may be unsanitary preparation environments and dirty containers or utensils.
To prevent food poisoning, it is important to wash ingredients with clean water and to wash hands after handling ingredients before and after preparation. Cooking meat or seafood completely over high heat is also a good idea.
“In North Korea, the only thing people do to prevent food poisoning is to disinfect items, cook food, and boil water,” the source said. “The state considers food poisoning an unimportant common disease, and people have long given up on getting help from a hospital or doctor. So when they get sick, they buy medicine or an IV on their own.”
The most important thing to prevent food poisoning is to follow food expiration dates and hygiene guidelines, but North Koreans struggling with food and financial shortages do not have the luxury to do so with any degree of thoroughness, the source said.
“If people can make a decent living, they will follow expiration dates and improve sanitation, but they are too busy trying to make ends meet now to have much time to worry,” he said.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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