While North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reportedly packing 300 pounds onto his 5-foot-9 frame, the reclusive nation's state-run media said this week its people should prepare for a famine and eat plant roots.
Kim said earlier this year North Korea could face a "golden age in 2016, but after new United Nations sanctions were put in place following North Korea's nuclear weapons test in February, Kim is changing his tune.
"The road to revolution is long and arduous," read an editorial in a state-connected newspaper this week, reports
The Telegraph. "We may have to go on an arduous march, during which we will have to chew the roots of plants once again."
"Arduous march," refers to a famine like the one that killed an estimated 3.5 million North Koreans during the 1990s.
North Korea, reports The Telegraph, has laid out a plan to conserve food by limiting how much people are allowed to eat and dictating that everyone give 2.2 pounds of rice to the state every month. Farmers are expected to give some of their crops to the state.
Kim has apparently gained almost 70 pounds in the last five years and now weighs just under 300, according to
Fox News. The 33-year-old also walks with a cane and has gout.
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