Time for a No-Fly Zone Over North Korea’s “Closed” Areas
I’m deeply ambivalent about cutting food aid to starve out North Korea or force it back to the talks because I don’t believe in starving innocent people for political reasons, and because I want the North Korean people to be empowered to challenge their government–something starving people never are. Both Nicholas Eberstadt and Marcus Noland have made this point, but there aren’t any political philosophers I consider more insightful than Eric Hoffer, who said:
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for “an inspiring super individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to their lives?” They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement. . . .
Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams. One of the reasons for the unrebelliousnes of the masses in China is the inordinate effort required there to scrape together the means of the scantiest subsistence. The intensified struggle for existence “is a static rather than a dynamic influence.”
Hoffer’s The True Believer may well be the most illuminating book I’ve ever read.
I want to help the people of North Korea, and I don’t believe that starving them out is the answer, although I do think that a sudden shock to the regime’s finances could force Kim Jong Il to kick enough of the power elite out of the lifeboat at once that the ensuing brawl would sink the entire leaky vessel. What I’m wrestling with is the fact that I have no faith in the fair distribution of food aid that goes through the World Food Program, since its programs depend on North Korea’s Public Distribution System–a corrupt, decrepit wreck that’s increasingly beyond the reach of monitoring. The shortages are most severe in North Korea’s “closed” areas, about which World Food Program spokesman Simon Pleuss recently said this:
He says his agency also is greatly concerned about the nutritional condition of people living in parts of the country which are government “no-go” areas. He says WFP Staff has no access to 49 out of 203 counties and districts in North Korea. He says the 17 percent of the population that lives there does not receive food aid.
and about which Refugees International recently said this:
The vast majority of the North Koreans that [Refugees International] interviewed were from North Hamgyeong province, one of the poorest provinces in the country and one deliberately cut off from national and international food assistance during the famine as part of a “triage” strategy to husband scarce food resources.
and Amnesty International said this:
Remote regions, including the north-eastern provinces of North and South Hamgyong and Kangwon which have always suffered from food deficits because of the mountainous terrain and lack of agricultural land, have been most dependent on the PDS and were worst hit in the famine. However, in 1994, when the food shortages became serious, the authorities reportedly stopped PDS [public distribution system] food supplies to these very provinces, at the same time as residents’ purchasing power was decimated by the collapse of local industries.
What do you do about approximately four million people whose government will neither feed nor let anyone else feed them? You shame the United Nations into declaring a no-fly zone and ask the U.S. drop them food, using its considerable air assets in the region–much like it did in northern Iraq and Afghanistan. The immediate objective is to provide enough food, medicine, and tents to sustain the lives of those who were barely surviving.
The North Koreans won’t like it, of course, but when all the talk of “sea of fire” is over, there isn’t much they can do about it. Their air force is decrepit, and they won’t go to war because someone is dropping food on them. North Korea’s leadership is willing to take risks that other nations might not take, but it has proven itself rational and calculating even in its bolder moments. They understand that The Big One means no more pleasure squads and no sequel to Pulgasari.
Like Saddam before him, Kim Jong Il is likely to perceive a no-fly zone as something he can ride out by not provoking a war. Hopefully, he will continue to think that right up to the moment that he loses control of events in Pyongyang. I say this because the declaration of a no-fly zone is very likely to lead to a massive flood of refugees into that area, a possible breakdown of civil authority, or even a “liberated zone” in northeast North Korea, in which case the cost of keeping people from fleeing to the area and holding onto it would impose a severe burden on North Korean military logistics and draw most of the manpower away from the DMZ. Any of these events is likely to splinter the regime and cause some discontented faction to remove it from power.
“Sure,” you say. “You falsely presume that the U.N. cares whether another million North Koreans die.” You may be right. But the U.N. is above all else–even above that fact that it is corrupt–utterly cowardly. I would add that my faith that the U.N. can be shamed into action is no more fantastic than the idea that China can be persuaded to reign in North Korea out of a sense of either responsibility or self-interest (although withering global pressure for a no-fly zone might force China to abstain from a no-fly resolution or strong-arm North Korean concessions to preempt one). Intense media coverage was able to force an international consensus for intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo, and other places despite the opposition of Security Council members. There is more than enough evidence that North Korea’s famine is in fact an intentional program of political cleansing to start the impetus for that pressure.