[Cankor] Report #224

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear subscriber,

Welcome to issue #224 of the CanKor Report.

For articles not original to CanKor, direct links are available in the
Contents section, should you wish to consult the originals on the internet.
If the links no longer function, you may refer to the full text articles
appended to the issue.

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The CanKor team

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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 224 - Full Focus Edition

Friday, 21 October 2005
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This week's full-FOCUS edition of CanKor explores the facts and issues 
surrounding recent moves by the DPRK to bring a ten-year era of massive food 
assistance to a stop, while at the same time reining in the escalating price 
of food grains staples in open markets by re-introducing a subsidized food 
rationing system.

Citing an excellent harvest in this "Year of Agriculture," DPRK officials 
outline new restrictions on foreign aid. Resident NGOs are to leave the 
country by year's end. Aid groups wishing to continue operations must shift 
from humanitarian to development aid. The largest multilateral organization, 
the UN World Food Programme, prepares radical reductions in its operations. 
But New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, just back from a White 
House-sanctioned four-day visit to the DPRK, says he secured permission for 
the WFP and 30 of its international employees to stay.

What constitutes "development aid" is now under question. Much of what the 
WFP has done, according to Country Director Richard Ragan, has in fact been 
development aid "dressed up as humanitarian aid." This was done to help ease 
donor discomfort over the appearance of supporting the Kim Jong Il regime. 
Curiously, the first WFP activities to be shut down as part of the new 
restructuring are the arguably development-oriented food enrichment 
factories, which employ 2,100 North Koreans, largely women, manufacturing 
noodles, biscuits and drinks from a blend of corn and soy beans.

Concurrently with ending food aid, in an apparent move to soften its 
transition into free-market economics, the DPRK has prohibited the sale of 
cereals in local markets and introduced a new food rationing system in urban 
areas. The most common explanation for this move is that the state seeks to 
narrow the increasing gap between the newly rich and newly poor, a 
phenomenon most extreme in urban areas, where it poses the danger of social 
unrest. A more intriguing perspective comes from Chinese traders speculating 
that the intended target may be the expanding power of the military over the 
economy.

Last month in New York, DPRK deputy foreign minister Choe Su Hon heated up 
the DPRK food aid debate by highlighting the politicization of humanitarian 
assistance through the link being made between food aid and human rights. In 
our OPINION section we add further voices to the ongoing dispute. WFP 
Country Director Richard Ragan comments on Stephen Haggard and Marcus 
Noland's Op-Ed, "Hungry for Human Rights" (see CanKor #221). Yonsei 
University professor Moon Chung-in explains Seoul's domestic and 
inter-Korean choices regarding food assistance to the DPRK. Additional web 
links to other resources in this ongoing debate complete the current edition 
of CanKor.
*************************************************

Contents:

FOCUS: Changes in DPRK food management

1. DPRK WILL ALLOW SOME AID GROUPS TO STAY SAYS RICHARDSON
   http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norkor21oct21,0,3725574.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews

2. DPRK SAYS BUMPER CROP JUSTIFIES LIMITS ON AID
   http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/international/asia/06korea.html?ei=5070&en=c2b794ac4347fad5&ex=1129262400&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

3. UN AGENCY TO SHUT FOOD FACTORIES IN DPRK
   http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK117732.htm

4. DPRK REINSTATES CONTROLS ON GRAIN SALES
   http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norkor3oct03,1,5799775.story?coll=la-headlines-world

5. DPRK ADOPTS NEW FOOD RATIONING SYSTEM
   http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200510/02/200510022246503479900090409041.html

OPINION: The DPRK Food Aid Debate

6. WEB RESOURCES ON THE DPRK FOOD AID DEBATE
   CanKor original

7. MOON CHUNG-IN: WHY SEOUL HELPS THE NORTH
   http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=2467

8. RICHARD RAGAN: FEEDING NORTH KOREA
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301726.html
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FOCUS: Changes in DPRK food management

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1. DPRK WILL ALLOW SOME AID GROUPS TO STAY SAYS RICHARDSON
   by Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times, 21 October 2005

North Korea has backed away from an order for all international aid 
organizations to leave the country by the end of the year, New Mexico Gov. 
Bill Richardson said today as he concluded a four-day visit to the isolated 
country.

"I believe they're sending signals of wanting to engage," an upbeat 
Richardson said at a news conference in Tokyo this morning, citing the 
change of heart over the planned expulsions. "Now there's a reprieve."

North Korea issued the order to the humanitarian agencies last month, 
claiming that a bumper harvest this year made the aid unnecessary. But aid 
agencies argue that more than a quarter of the 23 million North Koreans lack 
food and that emergency assistance is still needed.

Richardson said he secured permission for the United Nations' World Food 
Program and 30 of its international employees to stay in the country. He 
said, however, that he expected a modest reduction in the total number of 
international aid agencies in North Korea, to meet the regime's insistence 
on a shift from humanitarian to development aid.
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2. DPRK SAYS BUMPER CROP JUSTIFIES LIMITS ON AID
   by James Brooke, New York Times, 29 September 2005

Against a yellow sea of ripening rice, red flags flapped smartly in the 
autumn breeze on a recent day, apparently signalling that collective farm 
work brigades were harvesting a bumper crop in this fertile corner of North 
Korea.

"All people in the DPRK are now out to give helping hands to the farmers in 
harvesting," the Korean Central News Agency said of the fall harvest 
campaigns around this nation, formally called the Democratic People's 
Republic of Korea. After a decade of reliance on food aid, Kim Jong Il, the 
North Korean leader, had declared 2005 to be "The Year of Agriculture."

But the trundling tractors, hard-working peasants and marching soldiers with 
harvest baskets on their backs could also have been staged to impress two 
busloads of journalists who sped along a highway, heading toward South 
Korea. Separated by a six-foot-high fence and blanket restrictions against 
interviews with farmers, the visitors had no way of getting a closer view of 
food supplies in this secretive society.

After mass mobilizations of workers in June to plant rice, North Korean 
officials now say that their overall crop is up 10 percent over last year's 
yield. With memories fading of the famine that killed as much as 10 percent 
of North Korea's population of 22 million in the 1990's, according to 
estimates by international organizations, officials now cite this year's 
bumper rice and corn crops to justify new restrictions on foreign aid and 
foreign aid workers. Famine death tolls range from 1 million to 2.5 million, 
a figure cited at a recent conference on North Korea in Washington by Andrew 
S. Natsios, administrator of the United States Agency for International 
Development and the author of the book "The Great North Korean Famine."

By the end of this year, the World Food Program of the United Nations, 
source of 90 percent of the aid here, is under orders from North Korea to 
shift from direct food to development aid. In addition, new government 
policies dictate that all foreign personnel from the 12 private aid groups 
operating from Pyongyang, the capital, are to leave the country.

"Dec. 31 is the deadline for all internationals to have left," Padraig O 
Ruairc, country director for Concern Worldwide, a private group based in 
Ireland that works on water, sanitation and midwife projects in North Korea, 
said by telephone from Pyongyang. Aid groups, he added, "are getting 
refusals for their field visits. There are a lot of indications that this is 
serious," he said.

North Korean officials say they want private aid projects to continue, but 
they want resident foreigners to leave, returning occasionally to monitor 
the work. Under those conditions, Mr. O Ruairc and Jérôme Bossuet, country 
director for Triangle Génération Humanitaire, a French group, predicted that 
most aid groups would wind up their projects and leave.

Oversight by resident foreigners is essential for aid programs to continue, 
said David Hill, North Korea representative for the European Commission 
Humanitarian Office. Speaking from Pyongyang, he estimated that his $21 
million annual budget provided most of the funds for nine of the private 
groups here.

"Our prime requirement is that our partners are present on the ground, 
permanently," Mr. Hill said. Noting that talks are under way with North 
Korean officials to save the aid programs, he added, "Brussels is not going 
to shift on permanent residency."

Richard Ragan, an American who runs the World Food Program in North Korea, 
faces a different challenge: repackaging a program that helps to feed 6.5 
million people as development aid. Until now, the agency has avoided 
describing its aid here as development assistance, largely out of fear of 
alienating its largest supporter, the United States.

Now, to maintain this flow of food deemed vital to the most vulnerable one 
third of North Korea's population, United Nations officials are saying it 
was development aid all along. Mr. Ragan said he was now engaged in "a 
repackaging exercise."

"We have been dressing up development aid as humanitarian aid," Mr. Ragan 
said by telephone from Pyongyang. "There has been a reluctance by the donors 
to say they are doing development assistance."

His food-for-work program helps to build infrastructure, he said. His 19 
"food enrichment" factories employ 2,100 people, largely women, making 
noodles, biscuits and drinks made from a blend of corn and soybeans. The 
program sponsors lectures by nutritionists.

"Out of the half a million tons we bring into the country every year, 75 
percent is for classical development assistance," he said of food rations 
paid to workers on infrastructure projects. "Anytime you are in a situation 
with a chronic food problem for a number of years, the humanitarian and the 
developmental aspect blur."

After a year of hints, North Korea's policy changes were adopted at the 
cabinet level last summer, Mr. Ragan said. With talks continuing with North 
Korean officials and with the three primary donor nations, the United 
States, Japan and South Korea, he said he did not know what his program 
would look like next spring.

"After 10 years, the North Koreans were concerned about creating a culture 
of dependency," he said. But, he added, if the crop is up by 10 percent, 
North Korea will still be short 700,000 to 800,000 tons. In New York, Jan 
Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator told reporters on 
Sept. 23, "Abruptly halting humanitarian assistance programs at the end of 
the year would be potentially disastrous for the millions of people who 
benefit from the humanitarian assistance including food and medicines 
provided by the United Nations."

His organization estimates that 7 percent of North Koreans are starving, and 
37 percent are chronically malnourished. According to United Nations 
statistics, 40 percent of the children suffer from stunted growth, and 20 
percent are underweight. The average 7-year-old boy is 7 inches shorter and 
20 pounds lighter than his South Korean counterpart.

North Korea's deputy foreign minister, Choe Su Hon, said at a news 
conference in New York on Sept. 22 that because of his nation's "very good 
farming," the situation had improved "to a great extent." Another reason for 
the termination, he said, is the attempt by 13 countries, especially the 
United States, "to politicize the humanitarian assistance" by linking it to 
human rights.

Jay Lefkowitz, the American envoy on human rights in North Korea, suggested 
on Sept. 8 that the Bush administration would review whether to link food 
aid to changes in North Korea's human rights practices. A private bipartisan 
group that is considered the leading American group on the issue, the US 
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, recently issued a report, "Hunger 
and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea," that said "up to 
half of aid deliveries do not reach their intended recipients," but instead 
might be diverted for sale. At the Washington conference, Mr. Natsios said 
continued American aid was contingent on the presence of the World Food 
Program staff in North Korea. "If the World Food Program leaves, we're 
leaving," he said.

The shift from food to development aid comes as North Korea's government 
grapples with a politically powerful anniversary 10 years after the 1995 
floods that set off the years of famine, said Stephen W. Linton, chairman of 
Eugene Bell Foundation, a Washington-based private group that aids 44 North 
Korean hospitals and tuberculosis centers.

"I have never seen any evidence that North Korea wanted to become a 
permanent ward of the international community," Mr. Linton said by 
telephone. Noting that the foreign aid groups pay a price by agreeing to 
only have non-Korean speakers in Pyongyang, he said, "I would much rather 
send in Korean-speaking delegations than have someone living in Pyongyang 
who makes trips to the countryside with an official interpreter."

The attention given to the fate of a dozen European aid groups, said Mr. 
Linton, a Korean-speaker, overshadows "the absolute boom" in private aid 
from South Korea. The South Koreans, he said, will have a much greater and 
more fundamental impact on North Korea "than foreigners who run around in 
SUV's and do not speak the language."
*************************************************

3. UN AGENCY TO SHUT FOOD FACTORIES IN DPRK
   Reuters, 14 October 2005

The World Food Programme (WFP) will shutter its food enrichment factories in 
North Korea from November, the first major step toward winding down 
operations meant to feed 6.5 million of the country's most at-risk people. 
After closing its 19 factories in the reclusive nation to comply with 
Pyongyang's orders for an end to all humanitarian aid, the future of the UN 
programme in North Korea would be unclear, WFP country director Richard 
Ragan told Reuters.

"We've got to close them because I don't know what the state of play is," 
Ragan said, adding he was in negotiations about the WFP's role in North 
Korea.

"If I'm unable to get an agreement between donors and the North Koreans on a 
new programme then we'll have to close everything down."

The WFP factories, which reprocessed and enriched biscuits, noodles and 
other foods for distribution to children under 5, pregnant women and other 
vulnerable groups, would produce enough before closing to cover December 
supplies, Ragan said. The UN programme has provided food aid to North Korea 
since 1995 and employs 2,000 people, almost all women, at the factories.

"For the WFP, we've never closed such a large operation so fast anywhere in 
the world," Ragan said.

Food supplies have improved in impoverished North Korea since as many as 2.5 
million people died in a famine that peaked in 1995. But 7 percent of its 
22.5 million people are believed still starving and 37 percent chronically 
malnourished. The United Nations has appealed to Pyongyang to reverse its 
September decision to stop taking food aid by the end of the year and only 
accept development assistance out of concern of its children and others in 
danger of starvation. The North will still accept direct aid from South 
Korea, which provides its neighbour with massive amounts of rice with far 
fewer monitoring visits than the WFP.

Ragan said this year's harvest was expected to be 10 percent better than in 
2005, but added North Korea would remain food insecure until it overhauled 
its agriculture system.

"It (North Korea) might enjoy an increase in production this year, but to do 
that consistently for the next five or six years is going to be next to 
impossible," he said. "That means they've either got to depend on 
multilateral food donations, bilateral donations or the economy has to be 
strong enough that they can buy food on the international market."
*************************************************

4. DPRK REINSTATES CONTROLS ON GRAIN SALES
   by Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, October 3 2005

Rolling back some of its economic reforms, North Korea is banning the sale 
of rice and other grains at private markets and strengthening its old 
communist-style public distribution system under which all citizens are 
supposed to get rations, aid groups and North Korea experts say. The changes 
were supposed to be implemented Oct. 10, a holiday in North Korea marking 
the 60th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party. But reports from the 
World Food Program office in Pyongyang, the capital, indicate that merchants 
have been told already that they can no longer sell grain.

The United Nations agency said in a statement on its website that "as of 
Oct. 1, reports are that cereal sales in the markets will cease and public 
distribution centers will take over countrywide distribution." North Korea 
experts say the moves do not necessarily indicate an abrupt U-turn in the 
impoverished country's economic policies, so much as concern that change was 
taking place too quickly.

"I think it is a transitional necessity. You can't move too fast into 
free-market economics without softening the blow for people who have grown 
up in a planned economy," Richard Ragan, who heads the World Food Program 
office in Pyongyang, said in a recent telephone interview. "This is not that 
different from what you saw happening in China in the 1990s."

Lee Young Hwa, a Japan-based human rights worker who has close contacts with 
traders at the Chinese-North Korean border, believes the new restrictions on 
markets are designed to boost the power of the Workers' Party and curb the 
role of the military in the economy.

"The military people control the food sold at the market. Nobody else has 
the trucks or the access to gasoline to move food around the country. The 
leadership fears that their economic reforms aren't working because 
everything is controlled by the military, and they want to take back 
control," Lee said.

For years, there have been accusations that the military was pilfering 
humanitarian shipments of rice and other aid, keeping the best for its own 
and selling the rest at markets. Secretly taped video footage obtained last 
year by human rights workers shows apparently unopened sacks of rice given 
by the US and other donors being sold illegally at a market in the northern 
city of Chongjin. On the open market, a pound of rice costs 15 to 25 cents - 
an impossible sum for many North Koreans, whose average salary of $1 per 
month keeps them on the verge of starvation. Under the new rules, rice, as 
well as other staples such as corn, is to be sold at public distribution 
centers at subsidized prices and in rationed quantities. Markets, which have 
been gradually legalized since 2002, will still be permitted to sell 
vegetables, produce, clothing and other goods.

Cho Myong Chol, a former North Korean economist who lives in Seoul, said he 
believed North Korea would continue with market reforms but at a slower 
pace. "Since the economic reforms in 2002, the gap between the haves and the 
have-nots has become so extreme that there is an imbalance that is causing 
social unrest and dissatisfaction. I think they needed to do something about 
food to keep control."

It remains to be seen whether the changes will help ordinary North Koreans. 
The government recently informed UN aid officials that it was cutting back 
their operations and no longer needed large donations of rice and other 
foodstuffs. Experts believe North Korea is concerned about the UN's 
monitoring requirements and prefers direct aid from countries such as South 
Korea and China, which place fewer restrictions on donations.

Until the 1990s, the public distribution system introduced by North Korean 
founder Kim Il Sung was the hallmark of a nation that claimed to provide its 
people with everything from rice to shoes. But the system collapsed in the 
early 1990s, exacerbating a famine that killed an estimated 2 million 
people - about 10% of the population. The public distribution system still 
operates, but at reduced capacity. Although North Koreans today buy much of 
what they need at markets, the government doesn't like to admit it and 
insists that the cradle-to-grave system of social welfare remains.

"We are still a communist country. Nothing has changed. I get everything I 
need through the public distribution system," said Yoon So Jung, 25, a guide 
interviewed last week at Mt. Kumgang, one of the few areas of the country 
open for tourism. But pressed about her pink windbreaker, Yoon admitted 
hesitantly, "Well that, I bought at the market."
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5. DPRK ADOPTS NEW FOOD RATIONING SYSTEM
   Joongang Ilbo, 5 October 2005

More is becoming known about a new food rationing system introduced in urban 
areas of North Korea as of this month. According to sources working with 
China, the new rationing system is not just a revival of the previous one, 
but includes a dual pricing system.

"The most notable part of the new rationing system is that it sets a lower 
price for those who go to work, and a higher one for those who do not," said 
Choi Young-ho, a Korean Chinese merchant who returned from North Korea on 
October 2, "As for corn, it is sold at both 40 won and 190 won per 
kilogram."

The previous system gave out different amounts of rations; for example a 
person performing dangerous or heavy labour would receive 900 grams of food 
per day, but a family member who stayed at home would be allocated only 300 
grams. The new system is interpreted as being a desperate measure to return 
to the workplace those residents who left their jobs and began a trading 
business, as a result of the decade-old economic hardships.

Another characteristic of the new rationing system is that the government 
will purchase the crops produced at separately cultivated fields. Farmers 
will be distributed a certain amount of food all at once in autumn, instead 
of receiving monthly rations. In the process, the food produced at each 
field will be included in the amount distributed to the household, and the 
surplus is to be sold to the government. Selling food on the market will be 
severely regulated, giving farmers no choice but to sell the crop to the 
government, but fortunately the government purchasing price is on the high 
side, close to the more expensive price of the dual pricing system.
*************************************************

OPINION: The DPRK Food Aid Debate

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6. WEB RESOURCES ON THE DPRK FOOD AID DEBATE
   CanKor staff, 21 October 2005

At the beginning of September, the US Committee for Human Rights in North 
Korea published a monogram by Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, entitled 
"Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea." 
(http://www.hrnk.org/hunger/hungerReport05.pdf)

The ROK Ministry of Unification took issue with that report's criticism of 
the lack of transparency and monitoring that accompanies ROK food aid to the 
DPRK. (http://www.hrnk.org/documents/mou090205b-eng.pdf) Haggard and Noland 
responded to the Ministry of Unification in a letter defending the food aid 
report. (http://www.hrnk.org/documents/hnMOU090705.pdf) Both these documents 
may also be found in CanKor Report #219 
(http://www.cankor.ligi.ubc.ca/issues/219.htm)

For a further development of the rationale for ROK food aid policies, read, 
"Why Seoul helps the North," by Moon Chung-In, found below in this issue of 
CanKor. (http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=2467)

At the end of September, Haggard and Noland published an Op-Ed piece in the 
Washington Post, discussing the conundrum created by the DPRK's threat to 
expel humanitarian aid agencies. 
(http://www.iie.com/publications/opeds/oped.cfm?ResearchID=566) See also 
(http://www.cankor.ligi.ubc.ca/issues/221.htm)

A response to this was written by WFP Country Director Richard Ragan, and 
appears below in this issue of CanKor. 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301726.html)

Meanwhile, German economist Ruediger Frank wrote several papers that take a 
somewhat different approach to the current debate. The first, entitled "Food 
Aid to North Korea or How to Ride a Trojan Horse to Death," appeared in the 
Nautilus Institute's Policy Forum Online on 13 September. 
(http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0575Frank.html) The second, 
entitled -"North Korean Markets and the Reactivation of the Public 
Distribution System: Dialogue between a Pessimist and an Optimist" was 
published by the Nautilus Institute on 6 October. 
(http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0581Frank.html) The third was an 
Op-Ed piece appearing in the Korea Herald on 8 October, entitled "Whither 
Economic Reforms in DPRK?" 
(http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/archives/result_contents.asp?id=200510080004&query=North%20Korea) 
See also (http://www.cankor.ligi.ubc.ca/issues/222.htm)

Finally, and most recently, there has been a lively exchange between to 
opposing views on this topic, with Haggard/Noland on one side, and Ruediger 
Frank on the other. This is a must-see point-by-point exchange on a 
currently evolving topic. 
(http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/entry/2005/09/pointcounterpo.php)
*************************************************

7. WHY SEOUL HELPS THE NORTH
   by Moon Chung-In, Yonsei University, Seoul Times, 22 October 2005

Humanitarian assistance from the international community has helped North 
Korea to alleviate famine and human disasters over the past decade. But last 
week, North Korea's deputy foreign minister, Choe Su-Hon, asked the United 
Nations to halt its assistance through the World Food Program by the end of 
2005.

Officially this decision was attributed to a better harvest and the need to 
shift aid from humanitarian to development assistance. Behind the official 
position, however, lies North Korea's growing anxiety over international aid 
workers exposing North Korean society to the outside world, and over recent 
activities of the US Commission on Human Rights in North Korea, which links 
humanitarian assistance to human rights conditions.

Alarmed international aid organizations have argued that the North continues 
to suffer from food shortages and that once again its political motive of 
regime security will victimize the disadvantaged. After North Korea's recent 
announcement, South Korea has been accused of being Pyongyang's accomplice. 
International observers of North Korea's food crisis have blamed Seoul for 
the North's decision to discontinue aid from the WFP, claiming that the 
South's unmonitored transfer of food has allowed the North to cope with its 
food problem.

The argument has even been made that South Korea should suspend its direct 
food assistance to the North, and instead distribute it solely through the 
WFP to ensure more transparent and effective monitoring. The accusations 
against South Korea are grossly misleading, as Seoul's decision to transfer 
food directly is a combination of several factors that take into account the 
plight of the needy in North Korea.

It is true that the lion's share of Seoul's food assistance - about 400,000 
tons per year since 2002 - is directly transferred to the North. But South 
Korea has also been a steady donor to the WFP's efforts in the North, 
contributing 100,000 tons of grain to the program in 2004. This accounted 
for 27 percent of the program's total food aid to the North.

As contributions from the United States and Japan have dwindled, South 
Korea's relative portion has risen. And though the South's bilateral food 
assistance is relatively large, it is still far short of resolving North 
Korea's food problem. Thus it seems presumptuous to ascribe North Korea's 
request to Seoul's food assistance.

Seoul's decision to transfer food directly also reflects several domestic 
factors. As is the case with US Public Law 480, much of the food given to 
the North is closely tied to the disposal of surplus rice in South Korea. In 
addition, the relatively high overhead cost of distribution through the 
WFP - 30 percent - has made South Korean politicians and bureaucrats prefer 
a direct transfer. Another factor to consider is South Korea's decision in 
2000 to give rice aid to the North on a loan basis, and not through grants. 
This was done in an apparent attempt to help the North recognize the 
importance of reciprocal transactions.

Because Seoul's loan-based food assistance is for the general North Korean 
population, it has relatively limited leverage in securing transparency of 
distribution, compared to the WFP, where free food aid is provided strictly 
for socially vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, Seoul has been making every 
effort to prevent the diversion of food assistance to inappropriate sectors, 
and has increased the frequency of monitoring from only once in 2002 to 10 
in 2004 and a forecasted 20 times in 2005. These figures may be barely 
passable according to WFP standards, but they represent a significant change 
for Seoul.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that food aid does not 
exist within a vacuum. It is but one part of a complex and trying effort by 
the South Korean government to improve inter-Korean relations, reduce 
military tension and help its North Korean brethren. A one-dimensional 
moralistic outcry, no matter how well intentioned, may inadvertently result 
in complicating the progress already made.

South Korea's alleged complicity in the North's recent decision seems 
unmerited, and Seoul is unlikely to give up its bilateral transfers for the 
sake of the World Food Program. But the South has much to learn from the 
program's experiences and should reconsider the current mix of bilateral and 
multilateral assistance. International donors must also realize the limits 
of humanitarian intervention in dealing with North Korea, which is an 
economically ailing but politically hard state. And lastly, North Korea 
should understand that a shift to development assistance depends on first 
graduating from humanitarian assistance in an acceptable manner.
*************************************************

8. FEEDING NORTH KOREA
   by Richard Ragan, DPRK WFP Country Director, Washington Post, 14 October 
2005

Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland's Sept. 28 op-ed piece, "Hungry for Human 
Rights," rightly weighed in on the side of the poor and hungry citizens of 
North Korea, but the UN World Food Program (WFP) differs with the authors' 
assertions about monitoring and alleged food diversion.

With the cooperation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- North 
Korea -- the WFP has expanded its monitoring capacity during the past 18 
months and covers some 87 percent of the North Korean population via 300 to 
400 visits a month. Further, it provides assistance only to areas where 
distributions can be monitored.

Although this system could be improved further, the authors' notion that up 
to half of the WFP's humanitarian food aid is diverted defies common sense. 
As in all large relief operations, the bags used to ship the food are reused 
and end up in the marketplace, but food aid through the WFP is far less 
likely to be diverted than food aid that is delivered bilaterally and to 
which few or no monitoring requirements are attached.

Large-scale surveys of children show that rates of stunted growth from 
malnutrition in North Korea -- while still unacceptably high -- have 
declined. The WFP's food-for-work activities create employment and 
strengthen infrastructure as well as feed families. Although North Korea has 
asked the WFP to shift from humanitarian to development mode in 2006, 
two-thirds of the WFP's activities already contain some "capacity-building" 
elements. The WFP is thus confident it can continue its mission to help the 
neediest in North Korea.
*************************************************

End CanKor # 224

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