While North Korea continues to gain tens of millions of dollar in aid from the US and South Korea over the nuclear agreement where everyone pretends the North Koreans will actually denuclearize, its people continue to starve:
Flooding and poor harvests have caused North Korea’s worst food crisis since the late 1990s and have put millions at risk, the United Nations’ food agency said Wednesday.
The food shortage threatens widespread malnutrition, the World Food Program said.
“Millions of vulnerable North Koreans are at risk of slipping toward precarious hunger levels,” Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the WFP’s country director for North Korea, told a news conference.
The WFP had been given permission to launch a new operation to target those most vulnerable in eight of the country’s 10 provinces, or 6.4 million people, up from a current 1.2 million.
An international appeal for aid would be launched in the next two weeks. Food aid is needed to tide people over for the next three to four months until the next harvest, he said.
While 400,000 metric tons of U.S. food aid have already shipped, there is an urgent need for $20 million to get through the next autumn harvest, de Margerie said. “We are running against the clock here,” he said. [AP]
While the people are starving and the World Food Program is asking for tens of millions of dollars in international aid, the North Korean government has been busy investing money in other priorities such as completing construction of the world’s ugliest hotel.
I will throw this out there because I have conflicted feelings about denying food aid to North Korea, but it appears giving nations like North Korea international food aid just encourages the regime to not to use its own money to feeds its own citizens. Clearly if the regime has enough money to continue constructing a huge waste of money like the Ryugyong Hotel then it has enough money to buy food for its own people. I don’t see where the international community has an obligation to feed the citizens of a nation where the government is unwilling to spend its own money to feed its own people.
It seems to me its seems that all cash payments and other aid to North Korea should end and only food sent until the government in North Korea takes the steps necessary to feed their own people.
Popularity: 2%
11:11 pm on July 30th, 2008 1
I would add that the media credulously repeats the NK government line that the starvation is caused by natural disaster rather than the systemic problem of the NK economic system being unable to provide the needed food, goods and services to it’s people.
1:08 am on July 31st, 2008 2
I don’t understand why this is an issue? If South Koreans don’t care, why should I? There is no rebellion in North Korea, nobody is doing anything. Not in the north or the south. In East Germany when the iron wall was up, there were 20,000 defectors a year (don’t tell me that the Chinese kill them, that is BS). Where are all the NK defectors? In fact there are North Koreans who freely live in other countries like Japan who follow the dear leader. They don’t care either.
The only NK defectors are people in search of the pile of cash (relatively speaking) that the south gives them. Or win the “green card lottery” and live in Japan or the USA (a lottery that their brothers in the South would kill for).
Nobody (in the south or north) is complaining, nobody (ok a few hundred gold seekers) is defecting, nobody (besides hippies and people who are looking for self profit or self promotion) gives a crap. Lets focus on issues that matter.
6:02 am on July 31st, 2008 3
Wow yea thats bad….but I heard a rumor this morning that all Soldiers ….not just ones that live off of post will be able to drive POVs and that curfew changes to 0300 on the weekends effective August 15….
Who knows about this?