A family in Pungso County, Yanggang Province, took their own lives after suffering from prolonged starvation, Daily NK has learned.
A source in the province told Daily NK on Wednesday that “in late November, a family of three in Pungseo Country killed themselves after suffering a long time from economic distress and hunger.”
According to the source, the family — a young couple in their late 30s and an elementary school child with polio — was discovered by neighbors two days after their death.
Afterwards, police from the local police box dispatched to the scene investigated the incident, keeping neighbors away from the home.
According to the investigation so far, the family did not have even a kilogram of grain in their home and was suffering severe poverty. The police found that the family did not even have proper clothes to wear.
Neighbors reportedly testified that when the family began to starve, “the couple couldn’t send their child to school, the husband hardly showed up at work over the last couple of months, and the wife couldn’t leave the house because her face swelled up so much.”
Police asked the husband’s workplace about the couple, and were told that the couple was so upright that they would not beg from others no matter how little they had, and were exceptionally honest.
The source said the police concluded that as autumn began, the family barely survived by wandering around the fields and gleaning, and when this no longer worked, they eked out an existence by selling all their clothing. When they could find no way to survive longer, they killed themselves.
The source further reported that police believe the couple first gave their child sugar water laced with poison a few days prior to the incident, and then the couple drank the poison together.
However, neighbors reportedly believe it is more likely that all three simply starved to death on the same day.
The source said the police have issued a gag order to the neighborhood watch units and neighborhood offices to stop word of the incident from leaking, and have called for “the establishment of good communication systems between households in each neighborhood watch units and the bolstering guarding and patrols to prevent similar incidents towards the end of the year.”
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