North Korean Economy Watch

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 10-09-20-1
9-20-2010

The South Korean Ministry of Unification announced on September 14 that the number of ROK workers allowed in the Kaesong Industrial Complex, previously limited to fewer than 600, would be increased by two to three hundred. In response to the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, the South Korean government limited inter-Korean economic cooperation through the May 24 Measure, sharply cutting the number of South Korean workers in the joint industrial complex from around 1,000 down to 500. However, after companies in the complex voiced complaints over production losses caused by the measure, the government slightly raised the number of workers allowed, to 600, in mid-July. With this latest decision, the number will return to almost as many as were working prior to the May 24 Measure. This is the first sanction among those passed on May 24 to be practically rescinded.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Unification stated, “Companies in the KIC have been complaining about growing difficulties in maintaining quality and of worker fatigue due to the reduction of employees [allowed in the complex],” and announced that the ministry had decided to increase the number of workers since it sees no physical threat to them. This announcement came as inter-Korean relations, which took a sharp turn for the worse after the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, appear to be improving, with North Korea returning South Korean fishermen seized last month, the ROK Red Cross decision on September 13 to send disaster relief in response to flooding in the North, and working-level discussions on a reunion for separated families being held. However, the spokesperson also stated that although the number of workers allowed to travel to North Korea was being increased, no new or additional investments were being allowed in the KIC, as originally dictated by the May 24 Measure.

Even before the announcement to increase the number of workers in the KIC, the South Korean government had shown flexibility when it came to the May 24 Measure; contracts made before the measure were honored, and North Korean manufactured and agricultural goods have continued to be imported under agreements reached before the sanctions. The government was flexible on humanitarian aid, as well, continuing to provide assistance to the most destitute in North Korea despite the decision to suspend aid on principle. Medical aid, particularly to prevent the spread of Malaria, has also continued. Recently, the South Korean government decided to allow the ROK Red Cross to send 5,000 tons of rice and 10,000 tons of cement, worth approximately 100 million won, to North Korea in response to massive flooding. This is the first time since the Lee Myung-bak administration came to power that any rice aid has been sent to the North. It is very likely that it will be sent as private-sector aid.

Seoul continues to ban visits to North Korea, but private-sector organizations have been allowed to travel to the Kaesong region. Despite the May 24 Measure, exceptions have been made for South Koreans involved with economic cooperation in the KIC and the Mount Keumgang areas. Among the sanctions passed in May, the ban on North Korean ships operating in South Korean waters and the ban on new investment in the North are still being enforced, but the suspension of inter-Korean exchanges, travel to the North, and provision of humanitarian aid have all been eased.

Among the Ministry of National Defense measures, the only psychological warfare tactic employed has been through radio broadcasts, while the distribution of leaflets and the broadcasting over loudspeakers were canceled after North Korean protests. Joint U.S.-ROK anti-submarine warfare exercises in the West Sea were postponed, while the U.S. put on a show of force with the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the East Sea in late July. Maritime interdiction drills led by the ROK military are planned for mid-October. The South Korean government insists that the May 24 Measure continues to stand unchanged, yet the enforcement and execution of the details is less than uniform.

The government’s position is that the restriction on workers in the KIC was not a sanction aimed at North Korea, but rather, a measure to protect South Korean workers; therefore, easing this restriction cannot be seen as a lifting of the May 24 Measure. Ultimately, it appears that a slight improvement in inter-Korean relations has led to a small amount of flexibility in implementing the May 24 Measure, but that the government will continue to enforce the measure until North Korea takes responsibility for sinking the ROKS Cheonan.

Samaritan’s Purse, the US-based, religious charitable organization, has published some pictures of their recent delivery of flood relief supplies to Sinuiju.

Here is one photo:

You should check out the other photos in the set here.

Here is a video they produced before takeoff.

Samaritan’s Purse is delivering a portion of the US government’s $750,000 flood relief campaign.

Additional information:
1. South Korean aid in response to the flood. China sends aid.

2. Video of Sinuiju. Official Chinese and DPRK photos of the flooding.

3. Here are previous posts about Samaritan’s Purse in the DPRK.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The United States is offering $750,000 in emergency aid to North Korea to help aid recovery from devastating floods.

The U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Human Rights, Robert King, told VOA Wednesday that the money will be given to three U.S. non-governmental organizations — Samaritan’s Purse, Global Resource Services, and Mercy Corps.

He said the organizations will use the money primarily for medical supplies and will fly the aid into Pyongyang beginning later this week.

Read the full story here:
U.S. Offers Flood Aid to N.Korea
Choson Ilbo
9/2/2010

According to Fox News:

As the xenophobic North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il appears to be inching toward a murky transition of power, the United Nations is laying plans to spend more than $290 million on a welter of programs in the communist state—including a scheme to produce an algae sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food–provided someone else comes up with much of the money.

The money is by no means a sure thing, especially if the unpredictable North Korean dictator rejects any of the stringent oversight conditions attached to money from some of the important donors the U.N. hopes will chip in.

The U.N. plans, however, demonstrate the determination of the world organization and its most influential backers—notably, the U.S. government, which is the biggest single financial supporter of most U.N. aid and development organizations– to keep dangling carrots of assistance before the North Korean regime, even at its most provocative.

The U.N. plans persist despite such incidents as the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, most likely by a North Korean submarine, and the regime’s continued nuclear saber-rattling, especially toward South Korea. Just last month, for example, North Korea threatened a “powerful nuclear deterrence” in response to a joint U.S.-South Korean antisubmarine exercise prompted by the Cheonan incident.

All those uncertainties fade, however, alongside a bigger one: rumors that the ailing and reclusive Kim, who returned on Sunday from his second trip to China in three months, hopes to install his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor– a process that could already be well under way.

Whatever the outcome of the succession process, at least a dozen U.N. agencies and offices clearly hope to be deeply involved over the next five years in North Korea’s national welfare, in areas ranging from health care and education to sanitation and civil service training, “strengthening knowledge networks” in agriculture, alternate energy development, and transportation, not to mention improving North Korean export trade.

A significant number of the efforts will also go to bolstering the capabilities of the North Korean government, which is not surprising, since they are prepared in close collaboration with various departments of the ruling apparatus. These efforts include a strong focus on health care delivery and education (already problematic in a totalitarian state burdened with a smothering cult of the personality).

But they also include more ambiguous activities in a brutal and thorough-going dictatorship such as North Korea. Among them: coordinating “national knowledge networks and practices,” “management and specialist training,” and—in a country that regularly threatens its neighbors with nuclear and conventional war—a “disaster preparedness and response strategy” spurred by North Korea’s famines and floods. All of these activities are depicted by the U.N. documents as being strictly humanitarian in nature.

The array of plans is laid out in schematic form in a 22-page “United Nations Strategic Framework Results Matrix” for North Korea, which is being presented to members of the supervisory Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s principal development coordinating agency, at a meeting in New York this week.

Click here for the matrix.

The framework is buttressed by UNDP’s own country program for North Korea, which is a $38.3 million portion of the larger total. Both documents cover the period from 2011 to 2015.

Click here for the UNDP Country Program.

The UNDP contribution is noteworthy, among other things, for the fact that most of the money–$34 million—can be counted on to exist. That amount is described in the annex to the country program as coming from “regular” UNDP resources, meaning its core budget. Only $4 million of UNDP’s spending in North Korea comes from other contributions.

A UNDP spokesman underlined—as does the country program—the extent to which UNDP claims to be adhering to newly strengthened safeguards in relation to its North Korean program.

UNDP activities in North Korea exploded into scandal in 2007, leading to suspension of its program until 2009. Among other things, an independent investigative panel subsequently determined that UNDP had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country’s nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.

In the current program, UNDP emphasizes that it has revamped its hiring and currency policies, but adds that “a proper monitoring and evaluation plan is necessary to ensure accountability and transparency in project implementation.” The careful wording indicates that at least some of that planning remains to be done.

While UNDP has actual cash to spend, however, nearly $119 million of some $128 million that UNICEF plans to spend in North Korea over the next four years—about 93 per cent—is expected to come from outside donors, according to UNICEF’s own country plan for North Korea. That is, as UNICEF delicately puts it, “subject to the availability of specific purpose contributions” from those willing to put up the money.

Click here for the UNICEF Country Program.

Much of that volunteer UNICEF money would go toward building up North Korea’s grievously neglected clinical health care facilities, bolstering maternal and early childhood care, early childhood education and large-scale vaccination and medication campaigns to fight AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis.

Most of the anti-disease money is supposed to come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), a Geneva-based institution financed in part of Microsoft Found Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. Nowadays, the U.S. government contributes 28 percent of the GFATM’s funds.

And so far, GFATM has only handed over $12.45 million to UNICEF, according to the U.N. agency’s spokesman, Chris de Bono, for its anti-malarial and TV campaign. (According to GFATM’s website, UNICEF has received $18.35 million, out of about $31.5 million approved so far.) According to de Bono, another $56 million is due to come from GFATM starting in 2013, provided a “number of conditions” laid down by the Global Fund are met.

Those conditions, according to Global Fund communications director Jon Liden, largely bear on whether the money is meaning the health goals set by the donors. Among them, for example, is a commitment to cut in half the North Korean death rate from malaria by 2013, using the death rate in 2007 as a baseline (0.31 per 1,000 people, vs. 0.62.).

Click here for Global Fund report on North Korea.

Failure to meet the targets could result in reduced funding for the next three years, or a cutoff.

The additional “other” revenues required by UNICEF for 2011-2015 will be raised “as we get into our program,” according to spokesman De Bono, “as is our usual practice.”

The same apparently applies to the bulk of $101 million or so to be spent in North Korea by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO activities include supporting UNICEF on the malaria and TB campaigns, but also building up North Korean health care, supplying equipment and drugs, and helping institute telemedicine.

But WHO’s own “country cooperation strategy” for North Korea extends only to 2013, meaning all of its fundraising plans for the 2011-2015 have not yet been written.

In the current strategy document, completed in 2009, WHO notes that it will need to use about $3 million of its regular budget and mobilize $20 million annually from voluntary contributions to meet North Koreas needs. This, the document says, “will be a challenging task.”

Just how challenging, perhaps, can be seen in the case of the struggling World Food Program (WFP), whose efforts are outlined in the U.N. Strategic Framework as trying to provide “fortified locally produced nutritious foods” to young children.

In fact, WFP has been running a dwindling operation to provide emergency food to many more of North Korea’s desperately hungry population. But donors stampeded away from the WFP fundraising effort, especially after the Kim regime detonated a nuclear device last year, and questions were raised about whether the government was profiting from the food effort.

Questioned Raised About Who Profits From Aid to North Korea

Currently, WFP has dialed back the goal of its emergency food aid operation from $500 million in 2008-2009 to $91 million.

In the 2011-2015 strategic framework, UNDP and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization will be working on amplifying North Korea’s meager food supply, enhancing, among other things, areas where “double-cropping” is possible, and adding to fruit orchards and livestock herds. UNDP’s project documents say it will spend $13 million on “seed production in alternative cereals” –defined as wheat, barley, soybeans, potatoes—as well as “wild fruit processing and protein-rich production.”

Some of UNDP’s protein projects, however, seem decidedly outside the mainstream, or even bizarre. In its program document, for example, UNDP says it will “support pilot production of protein-rich plans, such as spirulina and pistia statiotes, which will supply nutrients.”

Spirulina is an algae that has gained a reputation in alternative food circles as a diet supplement. In the U.S., health food websites offer a powdered form for anywhere from $24 to $33 per pound—hardly a cheap source of protein for starving people. It is also sold in the U.S. as tropical fish food. But whether North Korea needs a “pilot project” to produce spirulina is debatable.

As far back as October, 2003, a North Korean news agency declared that the Kim government’s botanical institute had, “after years of researches [sic] completed the method of artificially cultivating spirulina at low cost.” The agency added, “It can be cultivated easily in greenhouses too.” Indeed, spirulina is currently listed as a marketable product on a North Korean export website. And on Aug. 6, a Chinese news agency announced that North Korean researchers had created a new spirulina vaccination “which prevents and treats domestic animals’ diseases and increases their weight.” Whether there was any independent verification of that claim was not mentioned in the news article.

As for pistia statiotes, also known as water lettuce, according to the website of the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at the University of Florida, the floating plant is a fast-growing weed, which can block waterways, deplete oxygen supplies in water, and threaten fish populations. It is described as an obnoxious invader in West Africa and Australia. While pistia can survive in temperate climates, it abhors cold and thrives mainly in tropical and semi-tropical environments—not exactly what North Korea is known for.

One of the few places where it is cultivated for its nutritional value is apparently southern China, where it is sometimes used as a supplemental carp food.

In a country full of starving or semi-starving people, of course, almost anything may be viewed as edible. But in the U.N.’s renewed desire to pour money into North Korea, the value of at least some of the projects it is pushing for approval may be hard to swallow.

Read the full story here:
U.N. Lays Plans to Spend $290M on Aid to North Korea
Fox News
George Russell
9/1/2010

According to Medical News Today:

In a country where good news is scarce, a pioneering agroforestry project in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is restoring heavily degraded landscapes and providing much-needed food for communities living on the sloping lands.

Jianchu Xu, East-Asia Coordinator for the World Agroforestry Centre, which has been providing technical expertise and training for the project since 2008, said agroforestry – in this case the growing of trees on sloping land – is uniquely suited to DPR Korea for addressing food security and protecting the environment.

“What we have managed to achieve so far has had a dramatic impact on people’s lives and the local environment,” Jianchu explains.

“Previously malnourished communities are now producing their own trees and growing chestnut, walnut, peaches, pears and other fruits and berries as well as medicinal bushes,” Jianchu explains. “They have more food and vitamins and are earning income through trading”.

Following the collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989 and a lack of subsidies for agriculture in DPR Korea, famine and malnutrition became widespread in rural areas.

DPR Korea is a harsh mountainous country where only 16% of the land area is suitable for cultivation. In desperation in the 1990s, people turned to the marginal sloping lands but this had a price: deforestation for cropping land and fuelwood left entire landscapes denuded and depleted of nutrients.

In an effort to reverse the situation, an innovative and pioneering project began in 2002 involving the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection. The World Agroforestry Centre was later brought in to provide technical advice.

Suan County has since expanded to 65 user groups in seven counties, with several hundred hectares of sloping land now under sustainable management. And the project is still growing.

A system of establishing user groups with one representative from each family has enabled demonstration plots to be set up and a large number of households to benefit from knowledge about growing multi-purpose trees. Such trees can improve and stabilize soils as well as provide fertilizer, fodder or fruits.

Most of the people farming the sloping lands are pension workers with little agricultural experience. The agroforestry systems they are now implementing and the techniques they have learnt are significantly increasing tree cover on the slopes as well giving them a diversity of crops.

Several of the user groups have started their own nurseries so that they can be self-sufficient and produce their own planting materials.

Initially a European consultant was engaged to provide advice on sloping land management, but in 2008 SDC brought the World Agroforestry Centre’s China office into the project.

“With similar experiences and history, our Chinese staff were well-placed to work in DPR Korea,” explains Jianchu. “It was important to have people with an understanding of the technical, institutional and socio-political context.”

There are very few international organizations operating in DPR Korea, and most of these are providing emergency relief. “With our strong focus on capacity development, we have established a good reputation,” adds Jianchu. So much so that the Centre is now negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the government and there are plans to establish an office in the country.

According to Jianchu, one of the most important aspects to ensuring the project is sustained is capacity development at all levels.

“As well as the user groups, we are providing training to multi-disciplinary working groups comprising representatives from the national academy, agricultural universities, forestry research and planning institutes, and staff of the Ministry.”

“There is an enormous need to improve knowledge and skills in DPR Korea in the area of natural resource management and to nurture young scientists,” says Jianchu. SDC is now investing in this area. Each year over the past few years, a handful of students from DPR Korea have undertaken studies with the Center for Mountain Ecosystem Studies, jointly run by the World Agroforestry Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and hosted by the Kunming Institute of Botany in China. Some could be considered for a doctoral program in the future.

To further support the up-skilling of DPR Korea scientists and the up-scaling of agroforestry, the Centre will soon publish an agroforestry manual. Work is also underway on an agroforestry policy for sloping lands management and an agroforestry inventory.

Read the full story here:
Agroforestry A Success In North Korea
Medical News Today
Kate Langford
8/31/2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 10-08-31-1
8/31/2010

An organization representing several major South Korean religious organizations crossed the DMZ on August 27 to deliver over 300 tons (thirteen 25-ton trucks) of flour to the city of Kaesong, with plans to distribute the aid to North Korea’s children and poverty-stricken. This is the first overland delivery of aid since Seoul’s May 24 measures restricting exchanges in response to the Cheonan incident.

Nine members of the organization, representing Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, travelled to the North. The group intends to visit one or two nurseries, and distribute flour to Kaesong City as well as Jangpung, Keumchon, Daechon, Chongdan and Yondan districts. The delegation is also delivering six boxes of nutrition supplements for children in Kaesong’s nurseries. Before crossing over into North Korea, the group held a press conference in Paju City’s Imjin Park. At the conference, a representative stated that while the aid shipment was later than desired, the organization thanked the South Korean government for making the decision to allow the delivery while facing a difficult situation in the aftermath of the Cheonan incident.

The organization also stated, “Peninsular denuclearization is also important for bringing peace and security to the Korean Peninsula,” but it is necessary to make ensuring the lives of those in both North and South Korea a top priority, and the group “earnestly hopes that the [South Korean] governments’ active support of humanitarian assistance can save the lives of North Korean residents and help to realize inter-Korean reconciliation and peace.”

The organization also stressed that religious teachings emphasized the need to exert all efforts for the desolate and the starving. The group is devoted to helping resolve the North Korean plight caused by starvation and malnutrition, and through these efforts, bringing about peace on the Korean peninsula. The organization, representing those of Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Protestant, Korean Buddhist, and Chongdo religions, as well as the United Religions Initiative of Korea, continues to pursue renewed government assistance to North Korea.

The Korean Conference of Religion and Peace (KCRP) issued a statement on August 27 declaring that the South Korean government needed to send aid to the North not only in response to the critical situation caused by recent flooding, but in order to help resolve the chronic food shortages causing ongoing hardship for the people of North Korea. In highlighting the plight of North Koreans, the group emphasizes familial and national ties, stressing Korean unity in calling for government assistance for ‘brethren’ in the North. The group also calls for both Seoul and Pyongyang to “open [their] hearts and hold talks on peninsular peace and unification” rather than continue with the current confrontational policies.

According to Yonhap:

A joint delegation of five major religious organizations in South Korea traveled to North Korea Friday to deliver food aid, the second civilian visit to the communist state since Seoul imposed a travel ban in May.

The nine-member delegation of the Catholic, Protestant, Cheondo, Buddhist and Won-Buddhist orders drove to the North from this western border town of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, accompanied by about a dozen trucks carrying 300 tons of flour.

The 250 million won (US$209,170) worth of aid was the second inter-Korean assistance since Seoul imposed a North Korea travel ban in May in protest of the sinking of a South Korean warship two months earlier. North Korea denied involvement in the sinking that killed 46 sailors.

Seoul allowed the first civilian visit on Aug. 17, in which an aid organization delivered 400 million won worth of anti-malaria aid to North Korea.

“The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is important, but the lives of the people on the Korean Peninsula take priority over any other issue,” the group said in a joint statement at a ceremony attended by some 150 people, ahead of its departure. “We religious communities from the left and the right are taking a step toward opening the door for reconciliation and peace in the inter-Korean relations.”

During its one-day visit, the delegation will deliver the flour to Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean border, which will be distributed to inhabitants in the border town and counties in North Hwanghae Province.

Read the full story below:
S. Korea’s pan-religious delegation travels to N. Korea with flour aid
Yonhap
8/27/2010

According to the AFP (h/t NKnews.org):

North Korea will receive emergency aid from China amid reports that the impoverished country’s food crisis would worsen this year.

China has decided to provide an unspecified amount of “emergency relief materials” to North Korea, its official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said late today.

“This measure will encourage the Korean people in their efforts to recover from the flood damage as early as possible and more energetically step up the building of a thriving nation,” it said.

The report followed a message of sympathy from China’s president Hu Jintao to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.

In the message, quoted by KCNA, Hu expressed deep sympathy and consolation over “the sad news that some parts of your country were hit by severe flood recently, causing causalities and property losses”.

The North has reported widespread flooding this summer which washed away homes, roads, railways and farmland, causing an unspecified number of deaths.

Heavy downpours last week swelled the Yalu river, which forms part of the border between China and North Korea, sending water spilling over its banks on both sides and inundating homes, roads and farmland.

After decades of deforestation, the North is particularly vulnerable to flooding. In 2007, it reported at least 600 people dead or missing from devastating floods.

Aid groups warned that this year’s flooding would aggravate the North’s chronic food shortages.

The North suffered a famine in the mid-1990s which killed hundreds of thousands. The UN children’s fund estimates one third of children are stunted by malnutrition.

A bungled currency revaluation last November, designed to flush out entrepreneurs’ savings, backfired disastrously, fuelling food shortages and sparking rare outbreaks of unrest.

In 2008 South Korea suspended an annual rice shipment to its impoverished neighbour as relations soured.

For its part, South Korea has also offered to send assistance.  According to Yonhap:

South Korea’s Red Cross on Thursday proposed providing aid to North Korea to help the communist neighbor recover from recent flood damages, an official said.

The proposal was made in a message delivered to a inter-Korean office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, a Unification Ministry official in Seoul said, declining to be identified.

The ministry said earlier in the day that it was considering allowing emergency relief assistance to North Korea, but did not elaborate. The North, which remains technically at war with the South, had to evacuate a large number of people when heavy rains raised the level of rivers on its border with China and flooded its towns earlier this month.

“It’s not just the people in the Sinuiju border area that we’re considering providing aid to,” a Red Cross official said by phone, declining to be named. “We will follow the examples of 2006 and 2007 when we provided help, but the scale of aid this year will be determined upon exact assessments.”

“The emergency aid will mainly consist of noodles, water, milk and the likes,” the ministry official said, ruling rice out.

The aid, if accepted, could open room for improvement in the inter-Korean relations, which have soured since South Korea blamed North Korea in May for the sinking of its warship. Pyongyang denies involvement in the sinking that killed 46 sailors.

Read the full stories here:
North Korea to receive aid from China
AFP
8/26/2010

S. Korea’s Red Cross proposes sending flood aid to N. Korea
Yonhap
Sam Kim
8/26/2010

According toYonhap:

The World Food Program is struggling to keep its project of feeding malnourished children in North Korea from shrinking, its director for the communist state said in an interview on Thursday.

Torben Due, who represents the WFP office in Pyongyang, said his organization set out to raise US$500 million two years ago to provide basic nutrition for North Korean children.

In reality, what the WFP ended up with was $100 million. Due said his team in Pyongyang has re-designed its operation for the next two years to value at $96 million because of grim expectations for funding.

“The most difficult obstacle is that we don’t get the resources we need. We don’t get the money we need,” said Due, who was in Seoul this week to meet with government officials to discuss food needs in North Korea.

“We had to reduce (our program) because we could see we would not get the money. We had to design a program small and realistic in terms of what we would be able to do,” he said.

The WFP is a U.N. organization heavily dependent on donation. In North Korea, it supplies cereal-type food mixed with soybeans, milk powder, sugar and others rich in protein and minerals, specifically aimed to fight nutritional deficiencies in growing children.

“The child who is chronically malnourished will be damaged in a way that lasts a whole life. He will be physically stunted, and mental and intellectual development will also be harmed,” Due said, adding North Korean children “particularly” like biscuits.

Due said political tensions appear to be one reason why the WFP operation is not receiving enough donations for North Korea, which has conducted two nuclear tests since 2006, defying warnings.

“This is a pure humanitarian issue. Children suffer more than anybody else if there is no food,” he said, adding that the WFP office in Pyongyang had to cut the number of counties it was supporting from 130 to 65 this year.

“You are talking about roughly a third of the population that has problems with insufficient food intake, both in terms of quantity and quality. What we’re providing is supplement for a small part of the population. The problem is much bigger than what the WFP program is about,” he said.

North Korea has a population of about 24 million. Due said quantity matters as much as quality when it comes to helping North Korean children.

“If you have a country with 5 million children, if you want to contribute and solve the problem, you must think in terms of what is needed,” he said.

Due declined to disclose his discussions with the South Korean government officials he met here. South Korea has suspended sending large-scale food aid to North Korea unless Pyongyang moves to denuclearize under a multinational agreement.

North Korea has relied on international handouts since it suffered massive famine in the 1990s, when as many as 2 million people reportedly died.

The country is vulnerable to natural disasters. Earlier this month, heavy rains along its border with China raised the level of rivers and led to the evacuation of 23,000 North Koreans, Due said.

“In the areas affected, it’s quite devastating,” he said. But Due said North Korea had yet to appeal for international assistance as “the impact is very limited” and “localized.”

“The government can probably handle it themselves. We are, along with the Red Cross, providing some items,” including 1,300 tons of food, he said, adding he had no knowledge of human losses yet.

Earlier Thursday, South Korea’s Red Cross proposed sending aid to North Korea to help it recover from the flooding.

Read the full story here:
WFP feeding fewer N. Korean children as donation shrinks: director
Yonhap
Sam Kim
8/26/2010

According to the Korea Times:

Christian Friends of Korea (CFK) said on its website last week that the North asked them to respond to a need for food, medicine and construction materials to the “fullest extent possible” to deal with “significant” flood damage.

The organization said it will follow through on a planned visit to North Korea later this month and assess flash flood destruction in the areas it works in.

This marks the first time a U.S.-based NGO has reported receiving an aid request directly from the North Korean government.

“We know from visits in years past of the damage and misery that (can) occur in the DPRK following heavy flooding,” it said.

The North’s official KNCA reported earlier this month that the flooding, brought on by torrential rain, had destroyed homes, roads and buildings. Almost 15,000 hectares of farmland were submerged, it said.

It reported casualties in Jagang and South Hamgyong provinces near its border with China but did not elaborate on how many, nor if people had died. China has also been coping with its worst flooding in decades.

The report did not indicate the level of need for outside help.

CFK is currently working to treat and control tuberculosis in the North, including refurbishing clinics and providing training. It said that in requesting aid, the government asked that it not divert from the medical work.

The original purpose of the planned trip was to confirm earlier aid shipments that included food, medical supplies, greenhouses and farming equipment.

The aid request came amid concerns regarding rivers near the border with China, which have swollen to dangerous levels. Xinhua News Agency reported earlier in the week that more heavy rain is expected in China.

Read the full story here:
N. Korea requests flood aid from U.S.-based NGO
Korea Times
Kim Young-jin
8/17/2010