North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE: Below is a list of organizations that are distributing US aid in the DPRK:

Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided more than $1.5 billion in assistance to people in 106 nations.

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organisation dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. We serve all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender.

Samaritan’s Purse provides immediate, no-red-tape response to the physical and spiritual needs of individuals in crisis situations, especially in locations where few others are working. The organisation is working in more than 100 countries to provide aid to victims of war, disease, natural disaster, poverty, famine and persecution.

Global Resource Services is dedicated to going beyond charity to find real solutions to complex global crisis where peace and security are in jeopardy. Our mission is driven by an end vision of reconciliation. Relationships, respect and reconciliation are the common threads that empower our cause.

Christian Friends of Korea (CFK) has been working since 1995 to bring hope and healing to the people of North Korea. To date, CFK’s efforts to build trust and relationships and meet real human needs at tuberculosis and healthcare facilities have resulted in the delivery of over $35 million USD in humanitarian assistance to the DPRK.

From the World Vision web page:

Five aid agencies today announced that they have signed an agreement with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to deliver U.S. government food assistance to North Koreans suffering from severe food shortages. The partnership will distribute 100,000 metric tons of food to more than a half-million needy people over a twelve-month period.

Mercy Corps is leading the programme, with World Vision as co-lead, pending final agreement. Partner agencies are Samaritan’s Purse, Global Resource Services and Christian Friends of Korea. Daily rations will be provided for approximately 550,000 vulnerable people - mostly children, the elderly and pregnant and nursing women - in two North Korean provinces. The programme, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) office of Food for Peace, is the first U.S. food assistance programme for North Korea since 2000.  

ORIGINAL POST:
From the Mercy Corps web site (July 1, 2008):

Mercy Corps is taking the lead in a yearlong distribution of 100,000 metric tons of food to quell rampant hunger in North Korea.

We have been asked by the U.S. government to spearhead a partnership of five non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that will implement a major food assistance program for North Korean families. Distribution of the food aid - provided by the U.S. government and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Food for Peace program - is taking place over the course of twelve months beginning in June 2008. Alongside our partner organizations, we will distribute food such as cereal grains, vegetable oils and beans through schools, hospitals, orphanages and other institutions.

…

Our food distribution programs are expected to reach more than 550,000 people - primarily children, the elderly and the extremely poor - in two provinces. We will have staff residing in North Korea to visit families, monitor distribution and assess impact.

Since 1996, Mercy Corps has promoted cross-cultural exchange and worked with the country’s vulnerable families and communities to help meet health and nutritional needs, as well as collaborate on long-term agricultural and economic solutions. Our late co-founder, Ells Culver, reached out to the North Korean people in the aftermath of drought, flooding and food shortages. That cooperation was strengthened last year when we hand-delivered $13 million of medicines for flood survivors, and earlier this year when we received a USAID grant to install emergency generators and medical equipment in six county hospitals.

Your gift to our Global Food Crisis fund will help us deliver assistance to even more families in some of the world’s most challenging places.

To learn more, visit their website (link).

To make a donation, click here.

To read the press release, see below:
Aid Agencies to Deliver U.S. Food Assistance to North Koreans
Reuters Alert Net
7/2/2008
Contact: Geraldine Ryerson-Cruz, +1.202.572.6302, gryerson@worldvision.org

Daily NK
6/14/2007

At the North and South Korea’s agricultural cooperation-related symposium sponsored by World Vision, in commemoration of the opening of the North Korea Agricultural Research Institute (Chief Park Hyo Geun), the Senior Researcher of Korea Rural Economic Institute Agricultural Researcher Kwon Tae Jin emphasized, “North Korea’s action, while ignoring the reality of aid organizations, of requesting or intervening in aid for development is an action which ignores international norms and processes.”

Researcher Kwon did acknowledge the necessity of change from an emergency aid form to aid for development.

However, he insisted, “If it is doubtful whether or not North Korea, while requesting a conversion to aid for development, is truly prepared to receive development aid, then the propriety of such aid and transparently showing the goal and content in addition to the process and means of monitoring as well as institutional equipping for evaluating the results should take place.”

Researcher Kwon pointed out that support to North Korea has played a positive role in preserving supply and demand of food provisions and the open and reform of North Korea, but the problem of not providing sufficient information to patrons and the failure to promise transparency has been exposed.

Further, regarding support for North Korea, he maintained that our government has caused tension by pursuing aid projects while failing to solidify the chemistry of citizens and choosing means of pursuing projects sporadically according to political reasoning.

On one hand, Researcher Park Hyo Geun pointed out, “The principal issue of North Korean agriculture is that the poor are not able to escape the cycle of poverty. The weakening of productivity of labor is sustaining the cycle of poverty of the destitute.”

Chief Park pressed, “When the February 13 agreement is actualized and the North Korean nuclear issue becomes resolved, domestic support for North Korea will increase epochally. The influence that support for North Korea will have on South Korea’s agricultural industry should greatly be considered.”

Yonhap
7/6/2005

North Korea’s food situation is stabilizing and is not as bad as expected in rural areas, a South Korean agricultural scholar who just returned from Pyongyang said Tuesday.

In an interview with Yonhap News Agency, Kwon Tae-jin, senior scholar of the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute, said, “The peak of food shortage usually comes in June, but I didn’t feel it probably because North Korea released food rations.”

Kwon visited Pyongyang, Chongju in North Pyongan Province, Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province and Paechon in South Hwanghae Province, along with officials of World Vision, an international relief agency, May 25-31.

In March, North Korean officials indicated that North Korea faced a shortfall of 1 million metric tons of food and asked the World Food Program (WFP) to expand its assistance.

Jean-Pierre DeMargerie, head of the WFP’s office in North Korea, said that the situation is not as bad as it was in the 1990s when about one million North Koreans are estimated to have died of hunger, but the food situation has again “started to deteriorate because of June and August flooding of critical cropland and major reductions in WFP and bilateral food assistance.”

Kwon said North Korea would have little difficulty planting rice seedlings this year as reservoirs are full of water in most plains, and tractors and rice-planting machines can work at full capacity.

“In some areas the food situation might be worsening, but agricultural production has stabilized. They seem to be focusing on diversifying their sources of income by planting some cash crops,” he said.

A weak harvest in 2006, disastrous summer flooding and a 75 percent fall in donor assistance dealt severe blows to the impoverished nation, according to WFP officials.

South Korea resumed shipments of fertilizer and emergency aid to the North, but it plans to withhold rice aid as an inducement for North Korea to fulfill its promise to shut down its main nuclear reactor as part of the landmark February 13 agreement.

South Korea suspended its food and fertilizer aid to North Korea after the North conducted missile tests in July. Resumption of the aid was blocked due to the North’s nuclear bomb test in October.

According to a recent think tank report, North Korea could run short of up to one third of the food it needs this year if South Korea and other countries withhold aid.

Data from the WFP and South Korea’s Unification Ministry show that the North will need between 5.24 million tons and 6.47 million tons of food this year. Depending on the weather, the availability of fertilizer and other factors, the communist state may only be able to produce 4.3 million tons of food by itself, the report said.