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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear Mr.Lancaster,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am afraid you cannot find "authoritative and
comprehensive" sources about agriculture</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>in the DPRK - neither in English, nor in Korean. Pyongyang
had never published the real</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>general statistics and analysis about them, but some basic
laws and government instructions</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>were published earlier (in 50ies) in Korean only.(but as
usual not in open editions). Officialy you had never knew how many </FONT><FONT
face=Arial>kg grain need /chonbo (50kg!), how many kg need for state
guarantee-fund (50kg!),and the average</FONT><FONT face=Arial> output/chonbo was
secret,too. Of course,they published lot of partial propaganda datas
of</FONT><FONT face=Arial> "success". The real situation was and remains a
secret because of the real datas</FONT><FONT face=Arial> of population - cca 26
- 27 millions (grain per capita!!).In 2001 dear leader told "about 25
millions".(See K.Pulikowski memoires).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>In ration per head the percent of rice was
different,depended from the status, state reserves,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>work situation,etc. In Winter and Spring often it was very
low (20%!).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>For the earlier period - till cca 1972 - as I know, the
best analysis was a book in Russian:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>"Shelshkoye chozyaystvo KNDR" by Marina
Ye.TRIGUBENKO, Moscow,</FONT><FONT face=Arial>1973.,ed.Nauka.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>136 p. </FONT> <FONT face=Arial>(Agriculture of
DPRK). What that time could be told, she told openly or "betwen the</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>lines".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The WFP/FAO mission to Pyongyang made a serious and
valuable work but I think it hadn`t</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>a possibility to have a real situation picture of
all the country.And it were a critical years for</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>the DPRK. (I spent nine year there, 1957/58 and
1960-1967, agriculture and population was one of my</FONT><FONT face=Arial>
interests).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Sincerely,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dr.Fendler Karoly</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Budapest</FONT></DIV>
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