Do North Korean soldiers eat their leaders' feces?

Question

There was an article in the news recently about how a North Korean soldier who defected had an incredibly high rate of parasites.

I heard a number of pundits, say the reason for this is that NK soldiers regularly eat their own leaders' excrement.

For example, in this InfoWars segment (25 seconds in), Alex Jones claims:

Now it is well known that the North Korean military eats the poop of the inner party leaders. So that's another reason the have got so many parasites is that they literally live of the feces of the higher-ups - I'm not kidding, they cook it.

Is this true?

Answer 1

Not likely. Experts commenting on the high rate of parasitic worms found in the general population attribute it to people desperately poor and hungry enough that they don't go through extensive processes to safeguard human waste/manure when used as fertilizers for crops.

Those higher up the proverbial food chain don't run into these problems because foreign aid and properly produced and handled foodstuffs are aggregated to the highest levels of the political hierarchy, like with most totalitarian societies.

Choi Min-ho, a professor at Seoul National University College of Medicine who specializes in parasites told CNN the use of human fertilizer on crops and poor sanitary conditions led to the transmission of parasitic cysts in North Korea

..... "It is a vicious cycle that is hard to stop in North Korea. They are so desperate to make end meets that they cannot take proper preventative measures," he said.

CNN - What parasitic worms in defector reveal about conditions in North Korea