NK News | North Koreans sit in a field in South Pyongan province on Sept. 6, 2018
The following article is an opinion piece by Heeje Lee of the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School.Views expressed in opinion articles are exclusively the author’s own and do not represent those of NK News.
In an op-ed for Newsweek, Gordon Chang claims that international food aid for North Korea doesn’t actually go toward ending hunger in the isolated and impoverished country. Instead, he argues, such aid has only worsened the DPRK’s chronic food insecurity, as the government has diverted aid destined for the country’s people in ways that apparently support the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Chang’s line of reasoning couldn’t be more misguided, and cutting off food aid as he recommends would have disastrous consequences for the North Korean people.
While it’s true that diversion of aid is a serious concern for humanitarian work globally, the problem is well-known and foreign aid organizations have worked hard to create systems and procedures that enable the transparent delivery and monitoring of aid.
The recent deterioration of North Korea’s food situation is unrelated to the provision of aid, stemming instead from the country’s increased isolation during the pandemic and low crop yields.
Rather than refuse aid on the basis of Pyongyang’s nuclear program, the international community should take decisive action to address the serious hunger problems that everyday North Koreans face during the pandemic. Doing so will help build trust and peace between the DPRK and global society. More importantly, it will save lives.
PROVIDING AID, BUILDING TRUST
Following the outbreak of COVID-19 in Jan. 2020, many countries began closing their borders and implementing lockdowns, and the DPRK was no exception.
The North Korean government assessed the threat of the virus and judged it could overwhelm the capacity of the country’s fragile health care system. Claiming that it was a matter of survival for the entire country, they ordered the border to be sealed as part of extremely strict antivirus measures that have made it all but impossible to enter the DPRK, even for its own diplomats.
While some trade continued via the country’s seaports, it did not take long to see the negative effects of largely halting the flow and movement of people and goods. The restrictions hit vulnerable people the hardest, as the pandemic has exposed social disparities and the bitter consequences in health outcomes.
In his op-ed, Chang correctly points out that North Korea has been experiencing chronic food insufficiency that has caused malnutrition among the population. Multiple sources, including David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (whom Chang cites), have even reported troubling news that the current level of food insecurity could be even worse than North Korea’s “Arduous March” famine in the mid-1990s.
Despite this, Chang wrongly attributes the current food situation to international efforts to help the North Korean people, rather than the pandemic and the DPRK’s COVID-19 controls. Food donated to North Korea, he claims, does not reach its target population as the government can sell the aid to further the construction of nuclear weapons. But Chang does not provide evidence to support this tenuous assertion about shapeshifting food aid.
To be clear, there is no association between food aid and the worsening food insecurity in North Korea. Before COVID-19, the level of malnutrition among North Korean people had been improving with consistent assistance, according to UNICEF. The situation has worsened because of the loss of humanitarian aid due to the DPRK’s border controls, as well as the reduction in food imports and farming supplies such as fertilizer.
Chang’s argument for cutting off aid due to alleged diversion reflects distrust and even hatred of the North Korean side. The better approach is to manage the potential for diversion with the kinds of advanced delivery and monitoring systems already in place. Those who truly want to build trust and help the North Korean people should work to fix or preempt such diversion, not terminate such aid altogether.
I have taught at an educational institution in Pyongyang for 6 years, both in-person and online, and during this time, I witnessed the power of engagement. The more time I spent with North Koreans, the more trust we built, and it became the driving force to increase cooperation. I learned that we need more dialogue when dealing with people we don’t understand.
Humanitarian aid is one area where outsiders have the opportunity to build trust with North Koreans, while also helping everyday people struggling with hunger and other problems. It would be a grave mistake to cut off food assistance based on wrong assumptions about how it works. The costs are too high — for North Koreans and for the international community.
The following article is an opinion piece by Heeje Lee of the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School.Views expressed in opinion articles are exclusively the author’s own and do not represent those of NK News.
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Heeje Lee, DDS, MPH is a researcher with the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School. He is a dentist specializing in endodontics and prosthodontics. During his career he has visited many developing countries and lived in Ethiopia for over 2 years to serve patients and train local dentists and students. Since 2016, he has traveled to North Korea multiple times to teach at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), School of Dentistry.