Aid workers urge world to help North
Korea
By DENNIS CODAY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Bangkok,
Thailand
North Korea is not likely to win any
popularity contests among the community of nations, but Catholic relief workers
are involved in relentless efforts to convince the world to send food relief to
the countrys starving population.
The reality is pretty grim, said Kathi Zellweger. She
made her 22nd trip to North Korea in March and spoke to NCR a couple
days after her return.
Hunger is the everyday reality of North Koreans, said
Zellweger, a 20-year veteran with Caritas Hong Kong and now director of the
groups international programs, which has included overseeing
Caritas work in North Korea since 1995.
Hardship and suffering is clearly visible, said
Zellweger who, in seeking emergency food aid, often runs into hostile reactions
to the North Korean government.
In her latest trip, Zellweger visited areas of the country just
opened up to workers representing nongovernmental organizations and the United
Nations. One memory stands out from her most recent trip. She was speaking to a
group of girls, each of whom she presumed to be around 12 years old. She
learned that they were 16 years old. Children are small. ... This is an
indication that food has been a problem for some years now, Zellweger
said.
She also reported seeing few pregnant women. The pregnant women
she did see reported gaining only 5 kilograms or less during their pregnancies.
Weight gain for a normal pregnancy should be around 10 kilograms. The children
born to these mothers will have problems, she said simply.
My concern is really this spring, she said. During the
1998 fall harvest, the U.N. World Food Program projected that North Korean food
stocks would last about eight months. This prediction was reconfirmed when the
World Food Program announced on April 2 that North Korean government food
stocks would be depleted within a matter of days.
Large shipments of aid donated by the United States, the European
Union and other donors were coming in at exactly the right time, the World Food
Program noted. The agency also cautioned that nearly all the aid was earmarked
for specific groups, mainly young children, leaving the population at large,
and especially adults in urban areas, vulnerable.
We know it will be difficult again this spring,
Zellweger said. She admits that it is not easy to raise money for North Korean
relief. The international community only reacts when they see the horror
pictures, she said. We should do something now before we start
seeing the horror pictures again.
Aiding a gangster state
What should be done? How much longer will the international
committee support food aid to a country that has been described as a
gangster state? Numerous reports say North Korea earns hard currency
three ways: selling drugs, selling missiles and selling counterfeit U.S. $100
bills.
North Korea is also thought to be developing nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons that it could launch from a multistage missile. This is
straining any compassion members of Congress may have felt for suffering North
Koreans. Congressional Republicans on key House committees are saying continued
food aid may be rewarding North Koreas bad behavior instead of deterring
it.
In January, Caritas Hong Kong launched a new aid appeal for North
Korean programs, hoping to raise $5.95 million in 1999. In her appeal letter,
Zellweger addressed questions about North Koreas missiles and nuclear
weapons. This fact underscores the necessity of renewing efforts to draw
Pyongyang out of its isolation. Cornering North Korea through crippling
sanctions is to court danger on a potentially catastrophic scale.
Standing on the cusp of that catastrophe is, of course, South
Korea. But generally, South Koreans dont seem to feel the panic the
countrys allies feel. The Korean peninsula has been divided for nearly 50
years, first by war and then by ideology. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung,
who took office in February 1998, began a new era of North-South relations by
declaring a sunshine policy of opening up and engaging the
North.
Reunification a goal
Caritas Coreana [Coreana means Korea] has channeled
more than $1 million in U.S. funds to North Korea through Caritas Hong Kong
since 1994. Our involvement is not a direct one but indirect due to the
political reasons, said Polycarp Js. Choe, national secretary of Caritas
Coreana.
The official policy of the Korean Catholic church is to
provide assistance to starving people in North Korea as much as possible,
Choe said. Food aid is the priority now, and agricultural development will be
the next stage, but the ultimate goal is reconciliation between North and
South Korean peoples.
The church believes that political unification is necessary,
but reunification would come from the reconciliation of the peoples, Choe
said.
The stumbling block for reconciliation is the hatred and hostility
accumulated for over 50 years, which, Choe said, has historical and ideological
roots, but also the constant brainwashing efforts of both regimes for the
last 50 years to hate each other.
In such circumstances, the efforts of the church are first
to get rid of these feelings among the Korean people in the South, especially
among the Catholics. Many organizations and groups within the church are doing
this.
The national episcopal conference has a committee for the
evangelization of North Korea and a special commission on reconciliation of the
Korean people. Nearly every diocese has similar local commissions. The Catholic
Priests Association for the Realization of Justice, formed in 1974 to challenge
the then-military dictatorship of South Korea, has been active in making
contacts with the North. Fr. Paul Moon Kyu-hyon visited North Korea in 1989.
Arrested on his return, he spent 3 years in jail.
In August 1998, Moon visited North Korea again and attended a
North Korea-sponsored reunification festival. He was arrested and spent 55 days
in jail. Eight other priests from the association also traveled to the North.
They did not attend the festival and were not arrested.
Through all these efforts over the years, most Catholics
accept the people in the North as their brothers and sisters, Choe said.
He also said that food aid is drawing North Korea out of its
isolation. When food aid started, North Korea had to open the door
slightly, Choe said. People who have visited North Korea several times
have noted positive changes, which Choe attributes to the door that food aid
opened.
Best hope for progress
Zellweger, in her appeal letter, wrote, Constructive
engagement with Pyongyang offers the best hope of progress. Aid agencies have a
role to play not only by providing charity but by creating an atmosphere for
dialogue, for mutual understanding, for developing common strategies, methods
and initiatives and concrete actions.
Zellweger told NCR, Humanitarian aid should not be
used for political bargaining.
You give aid to people in need, she said. Often
that happens in very difficult situations. North Korea is a case in
point.
Amartya Sen, the Indian economist who won a 1998 Nobel Prize for
his analysis of famine, said, Any idea that stopping [food aid] will
weaken the regime is not true. Dictatorial regimes are not strengthened by
sending food or weakened by not sending it. They can take a lot of beating of
their population, he said during a meeting with the press in an early
1999 visit to Seoul. They are quite willing to make sacrifices -- just
not their own.
You might as well send food -- it does some good for the
poor people who are suffering, he said.
Echoing those thoughts, Zellweger said, The suffering [in
North Korea] will continue to grow. This would not change if less aid was going
in.
Choe said, The food aid is a humanitarian effort, but its
impact will contribute to peace in the region.
In the beginning, there was a fear that food aid would be
misused for the military. But at the present moment there is a consensus among
the people that food aid is needed and will be a help for national
unification, he said.
Of course, there are people [in South Korea] who are against
the food aid, but it seems that they are a minority and not outspoken. In spite
of negative actions of the North Koreans [such as nuclear weapons, missile
demonstrations, the incursion of armed spy ships and clandestine submarines],
South Korean people are still in favor of food aid.
There is a tendency among the people to separate the
political agenda from the humanitarian aid, which means the separation of the
communist regime from the innocent ordinary people in the North, Choe
said.
People gradually realize that the hatred and hostility is
not for their brothers and sisters in the North, but for the dominant ruling
class of the regime, he said. People are thinking that the
innocent, starving people are the victims of the regime.
National Catholic Reporter, April 23,
1999
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