The New Consumerism of North Korea February 24, 2019 Jed Lea-Henry The famine came fast, but it had been quietly building for years. Leeching off their Soviet big brother, and pushing through a series of fast-gain agricultural policies worked… until it suddenly didn’t. As the Soviet Union began to collapse, so did North Korea. By 1994, it was all over, nothing could be done; a famine so deep and wide-reaching that it needed its own moniker – the ‘Arduous March’ – had settled over the country.