Thin Gruel: North Korea

Morsel Dept: But certain things they will reveal. How they ground tree bark and cooked it into a thin gruel for food. How they were sold to brokers to work as maids or unofficial wives in China. How starving neighbours as well as adults were executed for stealing even a morsel of meat, according to The Star. The fear that propelled the women to flee the brutality of their homeland clings to them as refugees in Toronto, terrified their freedom in Canada will mean death to family and friends in North Korea, which calls itself the Democratic People s Republic of Korea and the three North Korean women will not have their faces photographed. They will not disclose their names. Our lives meant nothing, one of them says. We were like flies. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.