U.N. Will Ask 2MB for Food Aid for N. Korea
The World Food Program will ask South Korea to contribute aid for North Korea within the next 10 days. Presumably, the aid would go through the WFP, which would represent a significant shift away from the Roh / DJ policy of giving unilateral and effectively unmonitored aid, will full knowledge that most of it will end up in the wrong stomachs. Lee appears to understand that unmonitored aid only prolongs the hunger and misery. Left to set its own priorities, the regime will feed the elite first, the military second, and use what’s left over as a tool of control over everyone else. That only works, of course, if they’re kept hungry.
To some extent, that principle is undercut when private organizations continue to provide aid without sufficient monitoring safeguards. According to this report, private groups have contributed about $30 million in food aid to North Korea this year. The amount pales next of governmental contributions, but it’s a significant enough amount to meet the needs of plenty of Pyongyang apparatchiks whose priorities might otherwise align with their starving countrymen.
(I should note that the article says nothing at all about monitoring or the lack thereof. I’m making an inference based on what I’ve read previously, small organizations’ bargaining power, and a what may also be a restrained use of that power. I’ll leave it to you to accept or reject that inference as you see fit.)
The WFP also estimates that North Korea’s next harvest will be just three million tons next year, which is about as bad as this year’s harvest. If the next harvest is equal to the last one, presumably, the overall food situation will be worse because hungry people are exhausting their reserves and coping strategies of last resort this year.
Lee has repeatedly said that he’d give food aid if the North Koreans would simply request it, and that general principle probably won’t change despite the recent downturn in relations. Monitoring, however, may continue to be an issue.