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August 23, 2007

“Famine in North Korea:” An Interactive Review (2 of 3)

[Part I is here.]   IV.  Aid We will probably never know how many people died in North Korea’s last Great Famine, but can we prevent the next one?  This regime  seems so  indifferent to the suffering of its people — even  determined to perpetuate it — that well-meaning aid agencies have  been forced to compromise basic humanitarian norms.  Those compromises are understandable, but the standards were meant to keep food from being used as a political weapon.  The compromises...
Categories Books & Films/Famine & Food Aid
August 22, 2007

“Famine in North Korea:” An Interactive Review (1 of 3)

The time stamp on this post may be the most telling part of it, for I first got my hands on Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard’s “Famine in North Korea:  Markets, Aid, and Reform” back in late March.  The intervening months have been very busy for me, and the book raised more points of discussion than I can cover here.  Noland and Haggard  are two of the finest, most respected scholars of all things North Korean and economic, and their...
Categories Books & Films/Famine & Food Aid
August 22, 2007

Ban Ki Moon’s ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ Fails the North Korean People and the U.N., Again

Not only is the UNDP scandal  not going away, it’s confirming how little has changed with both the U.N. and Ban Ki Moon.  For the U.N., corruption and cronyism still triumph over accountability.  For Ban, the fear of offending Kim Jong Il and of controversy in general to be the guide that principle and promises of reform aren’t.   A pattern emerges in which (1) Ban is confronted with U.N. inefficiency and corruption; (2) Ban promises bold reforms; (3) Ban engages...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
August 20, 2007

North Korea’s Floods: The Next Lost Opportunity

The secrecy of North Korea’s regime  and the recency of the floods mean that we should be wary of estimates we hear about the severity of the damage they caused, and that goes double for some of the  detailed  statistical compilations the papers are printing.   We do know  there  were fatalies; South Koreans have found corpses  that were  washed downstream across the DMZ.  Beyond that, things are less certain.  North Korea officially claims that the floods killed 300  people and...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
August 15, 2007

God Has a Veto

[Update 8/18:   Called it:  “The two Koreas on Saturday agreed to reschedule the inter-Korean summit slated for late August in Pyongyang to Oct. 2-4 after North Korea requested a delay because of its extensive flood damage, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.”]   Would Kim Jong Il host a summit in Pyongyang if he couldn’t make a propaganda spectacle of the visit?  Yesterday, I relayed the latest reports of serious flooding North Korea that have reportedly killed hundreds...
Categories Appeasement/Famine & Food Aid/Korean Politics
August 7, 2007

Buddhist NGO Warns of Return of Famine in North Korea

The South Korean NGO Good Friends, which has been well connected inside North Korea since the Great Famine, says that North Koreans are again starving to death in significant numbers, although the numbers do not (yet?) approach the death tolls of the 1990’s. Good Friends, an organization helping North Korea opened a media information session on the 2nd about the North Korean food shortage and said that immediate food support was necessary as “around 10 people per city and county...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus.   The UNDP  recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime.  It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education
March 26, 2007

N. Korea Admits 1M-Tonne Food Shortfall

As with every “revelation” that even partially originates from the North Korean government, treat this  with some skepticism: North Korea has admitted for the first time to food shortages of a milion tonnes, the World Food Programme said on Monday, adding that in the absence of better donor support, millions are vulnerable to hunger.  [Reuters, Lindsay Beck] Note that this estimated shortfall is  250,000 tonnes higher than  the WFP had last  estimated, and  consistent with  the U.N. Food and Agriculture...
Categories Famine & Food Aid
March 24, 2007

Anju Links for 3/24: Another Stolen Life, More Measles in N. Korea, Cowardly Capital, and the Diplomacy of Blame

*   Doina Bumbea, artist, 1950-1997.    From this photo, it’s  almost as if she could foresee the tragedy of her own  life. The circumstantial proof seems strong, though  not conclusive, that the  North Koreans lured  Doina from  Bucharest  to Japan and kidnapped her for the use of U.S. Army deserter James Dresnok,  who by all accounts is an utterly comtemptible person.  But  Doina’s family, which didn’t know what happened to her for all these years, seems convinced.  And there’s...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid/Money Laundering/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 23, 2007

How Many North Koreans Was the World Program Really Feeding?

Update:   Paul Eckert of Reuters did a very fine interview with Marcus Noland.  “It could well be that a nuclear deal that resulted in greater amounts of aid would actually allow the North Korean government to intensify activities that are essentially reestablishing economic and political control over the population,” he said. …. “When things look better … the North Korean government tries to pull back on this process of marketization and reform,” Noland said. “One of the saddest things...
Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Famine & Food Aid/WMD
March 12, 2007

Kim Jong Nam’s Bachelor Pad Burgled, and How the Other Side Lives

The Zhuyuan Haoyuan villa complex is 15 minutes from downtown Macau and its 80 villas are among the territory’s most exclusive. The average price of each villa is estimated HK$15 million, roughly US$1.92 million. Yellow sunflower symbols adorning the doors of nos. 361 and 371 easily identify them as Kim Jong-nam’s.  [Chosun Ilbo] If Kim Jong Nam is really estranged from his father, you really have to wonder where this money came from.  Meanwhile, the Daily NK reports on the...
Categories China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
March 12, 2007

UN Official: ‘We were being used completely as an ATM machine for the regime.’

Since it looks like we’re about to unfreeze a few million  in North Korean funds from  Banco Delta Asia, it’s worth remembering that another easy source of cash, representing  about as many millions in annual income, has just been abruptly terminated.  The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day. He would take...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
March 12, 2007

Marcus Noland Launches New Book on North Korean Famine

Until now, my main reference has been Andrew Natsios’s “The Great North Korean Famine,” because Natsios’s personal experience inside North Korea added so much to his observations, but Noland is almost in his own category  for sheer quality and rigor of research.  Noland is also the outlier for the low numbers he cites for the death toll from the famine — 600,000 to 1 million, as opposed to 2 to 2.5 million — and I’ve always wanted to know how...
Categories Books & Films/Famine & Food Aid
March 7, 2007

Food Crisis Update

It may be the first good news I’ve ever reported on the subject:  rice prices have actually fallen slightly in some of  North Korea’s most vulnerable areas, as the Daily NK reports in persuasive detail.  There’s even a city-by-city price chart.  The price drop is modest — roughly 25 to 30% — but this is the time of year when you’d expect food to be in very short supply, with rapid price increases,  if we were  headed for an imminent...
Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
March 6, 2007

Peace Is at Hand!

*    Accountability Is So Last Month:    For those who are thirsty for some rare news of someone holding Kim Jong Il accountable for anything lately, Opinion Journal has more on the end of the U.N. Development Program’s highly questionable North Korea operations, and some unsolicited advice for Chris Hill. *   ‘There’s Nothing to Wait for Here:’   Those words, from the North Korean delegate who passed reporters on his way into “normalization” talks, could be the truest...
Categories Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK
February 20, 2007

Japanese NGO Delivers Aid Inside North Korea

OK, I’m amazed: The operation to distribute emergency supplies in Hamgyong-bukto, North Korea was a success. Through one of our clandestine local networks, we were able to provide extremely needy people with a total of one ton of rice, as well as clothing and antibiotics. The value of all items supplied equaled 300,000 yen (about US$2,500). The extra supplies were financed by recent donations. Late November of last year, five members of LFNKR’s local group JYO entered Hoeryong-si, North Korea...
Categories Famine & Food Aid