Kim Jong Un orders North Koreans to stockpile POO as fertiliser after chemicals embargo sparks famine warnings
The country previously relied on South Korea for fertiliser, but it imposed an embargo 2010 when the North sank one of its ships
NORTH Koreans have been ordered to collect human POO to help protect the country's agricultural sector amid warnings of famine.
Survivors of the dictatorship's brutal regime says leader Kim Jong Un is demanding human faeces to help farms develop crops.
The country previously relied on South Korea for fertiliser, but it imposed an embargo in 2010 when the North sank one of its ships.
It sent some supplies last year but relations have deteriorated once again.
Yeonmi Park escaped North Korea in 2007 and wrote about the government's methods in her memoir, In Order To Live.
She said: "The government came up with a campaign to fill the fertiliser gap with a local and renewable source: human and animal waste.
"Every worker and every school had a quota to fill. You can imagine what kind of problems this created for our families.
"Every member of the household had a daily assignment, so when we got up in the morning, it was like a war. My aunts were the most competitive."
Canada's reported that shops even began stocking it in 2010.
Ms Park's aunt urged her not to poop in school but to wait until she got home.
Some people even raided their neighbours' toilets in a bid to meet their quotas, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper revealed in 2013.
Ms Park added: "Our bathrooms in North Korea were unusually far away from the house, so you had to be careful that the neighbours didn't steal from you at night.
"Some people would lock up their outhouses to keep the poop thieves away. At school the teachers would send us out into the streets to find poop and carry it back to class.
"So if we saw a dog pooping in the street, it was like gold. My uncle in Kowon had a big dog who made a big poop - and everyone in the family would fight over it."