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Section 1

Teacher's Lesson Plan

Confidential

Lesson Overview

Format

BBC Radio Documentary — "Food and Power: Inside North Korea's Kitchen." Three voices: narrator-journalist; food historian Dr. Grace Kwon (University of Seoul); and Mr. Park (name changed), a defector who worked as a cook for provincial party officials before crossing into China in 2009. The documentary explores food as an instrument of political power: the extraordinary dining culture at the top of the regime, the state rationing system, the great famine of the 1990s, and what food means to those who left.

Level

C1–C2

Duration

90 minutes

Skills

Vocabulary · Grammar · Reading · Listening · Speaking · Writing

Grammar

G1 Passive Reporting · G2 Mixed Conditionals · G3 Cleft Sentences · G4 Concession · G5 Subjunctive · G6 Inversion

Vocabulary

12 words (C1–C2): famine · scarcity · ration · regime · defector · propaganda · deprivation · contraband · subsistence · sovereignty · surplus · ideology

Sensitivity

This lesson deals with state famine, political oppression and mass deprivation — all of which are documented historical fact. Approach as political and humanitarian analysis. Mr. Park is a fictional composite grounded in documented defector testimonies — inform students of this before reading.

Background — Content for the Teacher

The Arduous March, 1994–1998

The North Korean famine — officially termed the "Arduous March" in state propaganda — killed an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million people. It was caused by floods, drought, the collapse of Soviet aid, and regime mismanagement. Crucially, the regime maintained food exports and continued to supply the military and party elite throughout. The Public Distribution System (PDS), which had controlled all food access since the 1950s, effectively collapsed in rural areas. Survival required illegal markets, foraging and bartering household goods.

Kim Jong-il's Food Culture

Multiple documented accounts — including testimony from his former personal chef, a Japanese national who worked for Kim Jong-il for over a decade — describe elaborate dining rituals at the top of the regime: a wine cellar of over 10,000 bottles, live seafood flown in weekly from Japan, a dedicated food safety officer whose sole role was pre-tasting every dish. The phrase "this is how you prepare food for a god" is drawn from composite defector testimonies about the culture of quasi-divine reverence surrounding the Kim family.

The Rationing System

The PDS assigned rations by political loyalty and occupation. Military officers and party members received the largest allocations. Those classified as "hostile class" — with family members who had defected, been imprisoned, or been deemed politically unreliable — received the smallest. During the famine, daily rations in some rural areas fell below 100 grams of grain per person.

Key Grammar — Teaching Notes

G1 — Passive Reporting in the context of a closed state

North Korea is the ideal teaching context for passive reporting: almost everything about the regime is alleged, claimed or disputed — independent verification is near-impossible by definition.
It is alleged that Kim Jong-il's chef flew in live seafood from Japan every week.
The daily ration is reported to have fallen below one hundred grams during the famine.
It has been claimed that the regime maintained food exports throughout the famine years.
Board both patterns and ensure students can produce both freely.

G6 — Inversion for documentary and political rhetoric

Never before had a state so systematically weaponised food as a tool of political control.
Not only did the rationing system determine what people ate, but it also determined their social rank.
Rarely does a defector speak openly — the fear outlasts the border crossing.
So deeply ingrained was the ideology of food-as-loyalty that hunger alone could not dislodge it.

Lesson Procedure

Time

Stage

Skill

Teacher does

Students do

0–8 min

Lead-in

Speaking

Board: "Can food be a weapon?" Take 3–4 responses. Board the title. "Who is the god? What does this imply about power?" Do not explain — let students speculate before reading.

Discuss food and power. Speculate about the title.

8–20 min

Vocabulary

—

12 C1-C2 words. Part A: read + example. Part B: collocations. Part C: gap-fill in documentary sentences.

Read. Match collocations. Gap-fill.

20–46 min

Grammar

—

G1–G6 through North Korea context. Six cards + exercises 1–5. Focus on G1 (passive reporting for unverifiable claims) and G6 (inversion for documentary rhetoric).

Study cards. Exercises 1–5. Pair-check.

46–58 min

Reading

Documentary transcript. Gist: "What is Dr. Kwon's central argument?" Label G1–G6. Tasks 1–2.

Read. Label structures. Questions. T/F/NG.

58–70 min

Listening

Mr. Park's testimony. Read TWICE. Mr. Park speaks slowly, carefully, choosing every word.

MCQ. Notes. Grammar + vocabulary hunt.

70–82 min

Speaking

Seminar: Food, power and ideology. All 6 structures. Monitor actively.

Discuss. Debate. Analyse.

80–90 min

Writing

120–150 words. Analytical essay, position paper, or editorial. All 6 + 6 vocab words.

Write. Self-check.

Listening Script — Mr. Park's Testimony

Read at a measured documentary pace. The narrator speaks clearly. Mr. Park speaks slowly, choosing every word carefully — someone who has learned that words carry consequences. Read twice.

Narrator:

Before Mr. Park crossed the frozen Tumen River into China, he had spent twelve years preparing food for provincial party officials in the North Hamgyong region. He now lives in Seoul. We asked him what food meant in the world he came from.

Mr. Park:

Food was not food. Food was rank. It is said that every official knew exactly where they stood in the system — not from a document, not from a title — from what appeared on their table at mealtimes. The portion size, the number of dishes, whether there was meat — all of it was a message from the state about your value as a person.

Narrator:

Mr. Park cooked for officials who received what the state classified as a first-category ration. It is reported that such rations included rice, meat and vegetables even during the famine years — while ordinary citizens in the same province were surviving on corn husks and foraged plants.

Mr. Park:

I knew what was happening outside. Everyone knew. But it was imperative that we not speak of it — not in the kitchen, not anywhere. What kept people silent was not ignorance. What kept people silent was the understanding that silence was the only currency they had left to offer the system. Never before had I understood so clearly that hunger is not merely the absence of food. It is the presence of someone else's surplus.

Narrator:

Despite international food aid arriving in North Korea from 1996, it is alleged that a significant portion was redirected to the military and the party. Not only did ordinary citizens lack food, but they also lacked any means to speak about what they lacked. The famine, Dr. Kwon has argued, was not merely an agricultural failure — it was a political choice, made visible in every ration that was withheld and every surplus that was not shared.

Mr. Park:

If the international community had applied more sustained pressure in those years, the outcome might look different today. But that is — how do you say it — a question for historians. What I know is this: I crossed a frozen river in December carrying nothing. And the first thing I did when I reached the other side was find food that no one had decided I deserved.

All 6 structures in the listening:
· G1: It is said that every official knew their rank from what appeared on their table / It is reported that first-category rations included meat / it is alleged that aid was redirected
· G2: If the international community had applied more sustained pressure, the outcome might look different today
· G3: What kept people silent was not ignorance / What I know is this / It is the presence of someone else's surplus
· G4: Despite international food aid arriving from 1996 / Despite what was happening outside
· G5: It was imperative that we not speak of it
· G6: Never before had I understood so clearly / Not only did ordinary citizens lack food, but they also lacked any means to speak

Answer Key

Handout 1 — Vocabulary

Part C: 1. famine 2. regime 3. ration 4. ideology 5. propaganda 6. defector 7. scarcity 8. deprivation 9. subsistence 10. contraband 11. surplus 12. sovereignty

Handout 2 — Grammar

Ex 1 (G1–G6 label): 1-G6 2-G1 3-G4 4-G3 5-G5 6-G2 7-G3 8-G6 9-G4 10-G5

Ex 2 (rewrite): 1. It is alleged/claimed that food aid was redirected to the military / Food aid is alleged to have been redirected (G1) 2. Not only did the rationing system determine food allocation, but it also determined social status (G6) 3. What the famine demonstrated was not merely agricultural failure but the deliberate weaponisation of scarcity / It was not agriculture but political choice that determined who ate (G3) 4. It is imperative that aid distribution be monitored by independent observers / that no ration be withheld without accountability (G5) 5. If the regime had not redirected food aid, fewer people might have died / the famine might not have reached such catastrophic scale (G2)

Ex 3 (concession): 1. Despite / In spite of 2. Even though / Although / While 3. Nevertheless / Nonetheless 4. While / Although 5. despite / in spite of

Ex 4 (subjunctive errors): 1. BE monitored 2. BE redirected 3. HAVE access 4. BE distributed 5. REMAIN confidential

Ex 5 (inversion): 1. Never before had a state so systematically weaponised food as a tool of political control. 2. Not only did the rationing system determine what people ate, but it also determined their social rank. 3. Rarely does a defector speak openly about what they witnessed — the fear outlasts the border crossing. 4. So deeply ingrained was the ideology of food-as-loyalty that hunger alone could not dislodge it. 5. Not until Mr. Park crossed the frozen river did he eat food that no one had decided he deserved.

Reading + Listening

Reading T/F/NG: 1 T 2 T 3 F (Dr. Kwon argues it was a political choice, not merely agricultural failure) 4 NG 5 T

Listening Task 1: 1-B 2-C 3-A

Task 2: rank/table / first-category / meat+vegetables / corn husks / imperative/not speak / ignorance/silence/surplus / sustained pressure/different / frozen river/deserved

"This Is How You Prepare Food for a God"

Food and Power in North Korea · Student Handouts · C1–C2

Name:

Date:

Class:

Handout 1

Vocabulary

Part A — Key Words (C1–C2)

Word

What it means / how it is used

famine

extreme and widespread shortage of food causing starvation and death across a population — The famine of the 1990s killed an estimated one to three million people.

scarcity

a serious shortage of something that is needed — Food scarcity was most severe in the rural north of the country.

ration

a fixed, limited amount of food or other goods officially allocated to each person — The daily ration fell to under one hundred grams of grain per person during the worst years.

regime

a government, especially an authoritarian one that controls a country with strict rules — The regime maintained strict control over all food distribution through the state system.

defector

a person who leaves their own country or group to join an opposing one — Mr. Park is a defector who now lives in Seoul under a changed name.

propaganda

information — often misleading or false — spread by a government to promote its own position — State propaganda described the famine as a temporary hardship caused by foreign enemies.

deprivation

the state of lacking basic necessities such as food, shelter or warmth — Decades of economic deprivation had eroded the population's capacity to resist.

contraband

goods that are brought in or traded illegally — Market food was technically contraband — buying and selling it could result in arrest.

subsistence

having or producing just enough food or income to survive — Millions were reduced to subsistence farming on tiny private plots.

sovereignty

supreme authority or power, especially of a state over its own territory — The regime invoked national sovereignty to resist international monitoring of food aid.

surplus

an amount of something that is more than is needed — The leadership's surplus was obscene in the context of mass starvation.

ideology

a set of beliefs or principles that form the basis of a political or economic system — Juche, the official state ideology, demanded total self-reliance and loyalty to the leader.

Part B — Collocations

Match each word on the left with the phrase it most naturally collocates with on the right. More than one answer may be possible — choose the most natural pairing.

Words

1. daily
2. widespread
3. state
4. mass
5. food
6. political

Collocates

a. propaganda
b. deprivation
c. surplus
d. famine
e. ration
f. ideology

Part C — Fill in the Gaps

Use the words from Part A. Each word is used once.

1.The __________________ of the 1990s did not affect all North Koreans equally — those with party connections continued to eat well.

2.The __________________ responded to international criticism by claiming the food crisis was caused by natural disaster and foreign sanctions.

3.Each citizen's daily __________________ was determined not by need, but by their position in the political hierarchy.

4.The state __________________ — Juche — demanded that citizens regard total loyalty to the leader as a form of national strength.

5.State __________________ portrayed the leadership as self-sacrificing, devoted to the people's welfare — a claim that the reality of the famine made increasingly difficult to sustain.

6.Every __________________ who made it to South Korea carried not only their own story but fragments of a reality the regime worked to suppress.

7.The __________________ of protein was so extreme that diseases associated with malnutrition began appearing in children who had never known adequate nutrition.

8.Years of economic __________________ had left the population with neither the means nor the organisational capacity to resist what was being done to them.

9.Most rural families were reduced to __________________ level — surviving on whatever could be grown on tiny private plots or gathered from the hillsides.

10.Market trading in food was classified as __________________ — yet the illegal markets that emerged during the famine saved more lives than the official distribution system.

11.The __________________ enjoyed by the leadership — elaborate banquets, imported wine, live seafood — stood in grotesque contrast to what was happening in the countryside.

12.The regime cited national __________________ as justification for refusing independent monitoring of international food aid deliveries.

Handout 2

Grammar

Six Advanced Structures — Food, Power and Political Language

G1 — PASSIVE REPORTING
The language of claims that cannot be independently verified — essential for writing about closed states.
It is alleged that Kim Jong-il's chef flew in live seafood from Japan every week.
The daily ration is reported to have fallen below one hundred grams during the famine.
It has been claimed that the regime maintained food exports throughout the famine years.
Aid is said to have been redirected to the military before reaching civilian populations.
Pattern 1: It is/has been alleged/reported/claimed THAT + clause
Pattern 2: Subject + is/was said/reported/alleged TO + infinitive or TO HAVE + pp

G2 — MIXED CONDITIONALS
Historical failures and their present consequences — the grammar of "what if".
If the regime hadn't redirected food aid in the 1990s, millions of people might still be alive.
If international monitoring had been accepted, the scale of the famine might not be so disputed today.
If independent markets hadn't emerged illegally, the death toll might have been far higher still.
Structure: If + past perfect → would/might/could + bare infinitive (present) or + have + pp (past consequence)

G3 — CLEFT SENTENCES
Isolating the element that carries the analytical weight — precision in political writing.
It is not hunger alone that breaks a population — it is the knowledge that others feast.
It was not agricultural failure but political choice that determined who ate and who did not.
What the famine revealed was not a failure of nature but a failure of political will.
What kept people silent was not ignorance — it was the understanding that silence was survival.
It-clefts: It was/is [X] that/who… · Wh-clefts: What [X] is/was/reveals…

G4 — CONCESSION
Acknowledging competing facts — the mark of measured analytical writing.
Despite international food aid arriving from 1996, distribution remained under state control.
Even though the regime acknowledged food shortages, it refused independent monitoring.
The illegal markets saved lives. Nevertheless, participation in them carried the risk of arrest.
While some aid reached civilian populations, a significant portion was reportedly redirected.

G5 — SUBJUNCTIVE
Institutional demands and imperatives — the language of state and humanitarian obligation.
It was imperative that every dish be tasted before it reached the leader's table.
Aid organisations demanded that distribution be independently monitored.
It is essential that food aid reach civilian populations without military diversion.
The committee insisted that all ration records be made available to investigators.
Structure: that + subject + BASE FORM · Triggers: imperative / essential / vital / demand / require / insist

G6 — INVERSION
Rhetorical force in documentary, journalistic and political writing.
Never before had a state so systematically weaponised food as a tool of political control.
Not only did the rationing system determine what people ate, but it also determined their social rank.
Rarely does a defector speak openly — the fear outlasts the border crossing.
So deeply ingrained was the ideology of food-as-loyalty that hunger alone could not dislodge it.
Triggers: Not only · Rarely · Never (before) · So + adj · Not until · Seldom → invert auxiliary + subject

Exercise 1 — Label Each Sentence (G1–G6)

1.Never before had a famine been so thoroughly concealed from the outside world by the very government responsible for it. [ ]

2.It is alleged that food aid delivered by international organisations was systematically redirected to military stockpiles before reaching civilian distribution points. [ ]

3.Despite decades of isolation, the regime maintained sufficient international trade to sustain the ruling elite's standard of living throughout the famine. [ ]

4.What the ration system encoded was not merely food allocation — it was a daily reminder of each citizen's political worth to the state. [ ]

5.It is essential that humanitarian organisations be granted unconditional access to food distribution networks before committing further aid. [ ]

6.If the Soviet Union had not collapsed in 1991, the economic conditions that precipitated the famine might never have developed to such catastrophic severity. [ ]

7.It was not the absence of food globally that caused the famine — it was the political decision about who should receive what food existed. [ ]

8.Not only did the regime deny the famine's existence in official communications, but it also continued exporting food during the worst years of the crisis. [ ]

9.Even though international pressure mounted throughout the 1990s, the regime's willingness to permit independent verification of aid distribution remained effectively zero. [ ]

10.The committee demanded that all records pertaining to food distribution during the famine period be preserved and made available to independent investigators. [ ]

Exercise 2 — Rewrite Using the Structure Indicated

Keep the meaning. Use the structure in brackets.

1."People claim that food aid was redirected to the military." → _______________ [G1 — two forms]

2."The rationing system determined food allocation AND social status." → _______________ [G6 — Not only…]

3."The key point is that political choice — not agriculture — determined who ate." → _______________ [G3 — two forms]

4."Aid must be monitored independently. No ration must be withheld without accountability." → _______________ [G5]

5."The regime redirected food aid, so more people died than would otherwise have done." → _______________ [G2 — mixed conditional]

Exercise 3 — Concession: Choose the Best Connector

Use: despite · even though · nevertheless · while · in spite of

1.__________________ international food aid arriving from 1996 onwards, distribution remained under state control and largely inaccessible to the most vulnerable populations.

2.__________________ the regime officially acknowledged food shortages, it refused all requests for independent monitoring of aid distribution.

3.Illegal markets emerged as the primary means of survival for millions of people. __________________, participation in them carried a serious risk of arrest and imprisonment.

4.__________________ some defectors have spoken publicly about their experiences, the majority remain silent — even after resettlement in South Korea.

5.The regime maintained an elaborate diplomatic presence abroad __________________ an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe at home.

Exercise 4 — Subjunctive: Correct the Error

1. "It was imperative that all food aid is monitored by independent observers before distribution."