Your linking of it ("selling their children for meat") implies that some people are, as a matter of course, selling their children to a butcher for monetary gain; the implication is that we are, therefore, reasonably justified in vilifying the populace of North Korea as monsters.

Reading the story gives quite a different impression; a nation, gripped by famine, where people will do just about anything to get food, and there's rumours of "special" meat in the markets. The sources of this information are refugees who have a vested interest in painting the situation as black as possible in order to strengthen their refugee status. Shadow economies have sprung up on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis. Survival is a grim business. Tales of cannibalism abounded in the Irish Potato Famine, too.

Right now is a really bad time to be a North Korean. If you don't starve to death, you'll be sent to the camps or drafted into the army.

The "businessmen" interviewed in the LA Times article might just turn out to be the people who force North Korea to fling off her shackles and face up to the fact that in the modern world, it's strictly business.