[USFK Forums] By Order of N. Korea, U.N. Halts Food Assistance There [NYT]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Saturday, January 7, 2006

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By Order of North Korea, U.N. Halts Food Assistance There

By JAMES BROOKE

TOKYO, Jan. 6 - The United Nations World Food Program, which was helping to feed a third of the 22 million people of North Korea as recently as August, has ended all feeding programs there at the request of the government.

"Operations are completely halted," Richard Ragan, an American who represents the agency in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, said Friday in a telephone interview. Noting that government pressure had already forced a cutback this fall, he said: "We were feeding 600,000 people in December. As of Jan. 1 we are feeding nobody."

The agency has closed its five offices outside Pyongyang, closed its 19 food processing plants in the country and cut its foreign staff there nearly in half, to about 25, Mr. Ragan said from Beijing. In the last decade the agency has spent an estimated $1.7 billion to feed North Koreans. A major source of food for the nation's poor, the agency is believed to have helped cut malnutrition rates.

North Korean officials have justified the shutdown by saying that after a decade of receiving Western aid they want Western groups to shift to work that will help the nation become more developed. With the severe famine of the mid-1990's a fading memory, the officials also say that this fall's bumper harvest is putting the country on the road to agricultural self-sufficiency.

"Agriculture should be put forward as the main front of the economic construction this year, too, and all the forces be mobilized and concentrated on farming once again," the nation's annual New Year's editorial, a major policy document, said Sunday.

Through a nationwide mobilization, the North increased its estimated grain production to 3.64 million tons, the highest level in a decade, according to the United States Agriculture Department.

In a symbolic gesture, the North shipped one ton of rice to South Korea last week, the first such food shipment since 1984.

But many foreign analysts say the secretive nation's rulers are pursuing a strategy to cut the number of Westerners roaming the countryside inspecting food distribution networks. While World Food Program aid was being phased out, food aid from China and South Korea rose. Last year China and the South each sent about 500,000 tons of grain.

"One of their key concerns was about how we monitored our program," Mr. Ragan said, noting that food program workers made 300 to 500 inspection visits each month. "The Chinese don't monitor at all, as far as I am aware," he said, while South Korea has announced that it plans to make 20 inspection visits this year.

In addition to evicting the World Food Program's staff, the North has ordered the 12 European aid groups working in the country to leave by spring. Three left in recent days because of an expulsion order that was imposed last fall after the European Union proposed a United Nations resolution criticizing the North's human rights record.

Another condemnation was issued in the United States on Wednesday, when the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy institute, released its annual Index of Economic Freedom. North Korea was ranked 157th - last place.

In October, the North rescinded a free-market development when it banned the private sale of grain. By restoring the state-run rationing system, the government apparently hopes to win more control over the urban population, which was restive over high food prices in private markets. But the end of private markets is expected to alienate farmers and cut food production next summer.

The end of a vigorous inspection system by foreign aid programs has alienated the Bush administration, long a skeptic of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader. The United States has suspended delivery of about 25,000 tons of aid promised in 2005.

"Unless we can be sure that the food we give is really going to the people who need it, then we can't continue to provide aid," Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said in Washington on Dec. 29.

[Mr. Joe]

They want free money or anything any country or church or agency is willing to give, but do not want any interference in the way they distribute it.
So lets let them enjoy their "Right" to be left alone.
Let's worry about people who will appreciate our aid.
Let's take care of our own needy first!
If, after we do that, we have some left over goodies, THEN lets give some to the people who do NOT call us infidels, and who do not live for the day that we must be subjected to the rule of ISLAM, and who are bound by Jihad to remove all other religions from the earth.