One cool morning last April in Pyongyang, North Korea, I watched a woman squat over a patch of grass along the Daedong River. A large handkerchief covering her head was knotted below her chin, encircling her sunburned and wrinkled face. As a van passed by blaring patriotic hymns from the oversize speakers on its roof, she weeded the riverbank. In North Korea, keeping the neighborhood clean is a civic duty. But she was far from any neighborhood. She was gathering the weeds for food.
On Nov. 13, a North Korean soldier in his 20s was shot multiple times as he ran across the demilitarized zone into South Korea. His surgeons reported finding dozens of parasitic intestinal worms inside his abdominal cavity, some as long as 11 inches, suggesting severe malnutrition.
As these stories show — and as I have seen during my 16 visits to North Korea in the past decade — hunger remains a way of life there. Forty-one percent of North Koreans, about 10.5 million people, are undernourished, and 28 percent of children under 5 years old have stunted growth. When my 4-year-old daughter visited Pyongyang in 2013, she, all of three feet, towered over children twice her age.
The hunger is devastating. And it’s our fault.
Led by the United States, the international community is crippling North Korea’s economy. In August and September, the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions banning exports of coal, iron, lead, seafood and textiles and limiting the import of crude oil and refined petroleum products. The United States, Japan and South Korea have each imposed bilateral sanctions on Pyongyang to further isolate the country.
We are trying to inflict pain on the North Korean regime to stop the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. That’s understandable. But in the process, we are also punishing the most vulnerable citizens and shackling the ability of humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to them.
That North Korea cannot feed its people on its own is not new. It was the catastrophic famine in the 1990s that caused the reclusive government to open itself to international aid. Despite recent improvements in the nation’s food-production capacity, frequent natural disasters such as floods and droughts still cause severe food shortages.This year is no different. In July, drought reportedly reduced the harvest by 30 percent compared with last year. As of August, each person receives a daily ration of 300 grams per day, about half the government target of 573 grams per day. That is like having only two medium potatoes for the day, every day.
It should be no surprise that around 60 percent of North Koreans buy food at informal markets to supplement their diets. To do that, they need money.
Last year, former President Park Geun-hye of South Korea shut down a joint project in the border town of Kaesong that employed 53,000 North Korean factory workers. This year, with the United Nations Security Council ban on textile exports, countless factory workers — far more than the tens of thousands from last year — will no longer have jobs. The ban on seafood exports means that fishermen will no longer be able to sell their catches to the Chinese. The reduction in how much oil North Korea can import will also cause food prices to rise. The impending loss of income from the sanctions will mean that people will go without food.
The sanctions have also crippled humanitarian help. In one troubling example, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, has written that cancer patients may not get access to chemotherapy because of the sanctions. Just last month, Britain announced it was cutting off all humanitarian aid to North Korea.
There is disagreement on whether the sanctions are even effective. The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed eight sanctions resolutions against Pyongyang since 2006, the year North Korea first tested a nuclear device. But as many as 49 countries may be in violation of the sanctions because the United Nations does not have the power to enforce them.
Their effectiveness is also limited because North Koreans are used to shortages and hardship, and the country can survive without exports. (Sanctions on Iran, often cited as an example to justify sanctions on North Korea, were more effective because the country is much more dependent on exports.) Even President Trump acknowledged recently that he doesn’t know if sanctions will work in North Korea.
The North Korean regime could halt its costly nuclear and missile program and use the money to feed its people. But the leaders have made it clear that they will never give up their quest for nuclear weapons as long as the United States continues its “hostile policies.”
This is a chicken and egg game. While we are playing, people starve.
The international community has been providing aid to North Korea for a very long time. Once it gets into that country, the North Korean government decide where it goes. The idea that this is in internationally cause problem is false. The North Korean government is the reason these people are starving. Any monetary aid is directed at it's military, although you couldn't tell by looking at it's decaying equipment. Most other tangible aid is redirected toward the elite of the country.
Uh no. The plight of the North Korean people is not the fault of the US or the American people.
If any fault is to be levied it falls into two places.
1. The military oligarchy of the Kim Regime.
2. The Chinese government for happily advancing the standard of living for its own population and refusing to decapitate the Kim Regime and bring North Korea into its economic sphere.
It is not the USA's fault, MacArthur could have solved the problem years ago
Embargoes like the one on NK have never worked, anywhere. They cause huge suffering among the population, without disturbing the power structure. They are a very cruel joke.
Not exactly true.
The embargo and sanctions against S. Africa worked quite well.
Perhaps not...
Every time we have thawed relations out a little with them and sent them aid, they have used it for things like building a nuclear program and Kim's collection of Lucille Ball videotapes. People say that the North Korean military is to be feared, but I wonder, because 'an army marches on their stomach' and they have little ot no food to feed them with. If their government cared about their own citizens, they would take steps to join the community of nations where aid flows fairly freely.
Build farms instead of weapons should be their first priority, but it is not. It takes two to tango, but the N.K.'s won't come to the dance, even though this administration has offered direct talks to the N.K.s.
You cannot build ICBMs with food. There is no reason to prevent food shipments from alleviating the wide-spread starvation in that sad land.
You're absolutely right about the regime, of course... but the embargo does little or nothing against it, and a lot against the people who have no choice in this mess.
Food shipments are allowed.
North Korea Sanctions - U.S. Department of the Treasury
www.treasury.gov › … › Financial Sanctions › Programs › pages
463. Can nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide assistance to North Korea?
Yes. Per General License No. 5, NGOs are authorized to export or reexport services to North Korea that would otherwise be prohibited by Executive Order 13722 in support of the following activities: (1) activities to support humanitarian projects to meet basic human needs in North Korea, including drought and flood relief, food, nutrition, and medicine distribution, the provision of health services, assistance for individuals with disabilities, and environmental programs; (2) activities to support democracy building in North Korea, including rule of law, citizen participation, government accountability, universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, access to information, and civil society development projects; (3) activities to support education in North Korea, including combating illiteracy, increasing access to education, international exchanges, and assisting education reform projects; (4) activities to support non-commercial development projects directly benefiting the North Korean people, including preventing infectious disease and promoting maternal/child health, sustainable agriculture, and clean water assistance; and (5) activities to support environmental protection, including the preservation and protection of threatened or endangered species and the remediation of pollution or other environmental damage. Additionally, U.S. depository institutions, U.S.-registered brokers or dealers in securities, and U.S.-registered money transmitters are authorized to process transfers of funds on behalf of U.S. or third-country NGOS to or from North Korea in support of the activities identified above. Executive Order 13810 does not modify any of those authorizations.
General License No. 5 does not authorize transactions with the Government of North Korea or other blocked persons, except for limited transactions with the Government of North Korea that are necessary for the above-described activities, such as payment of taxes and other fees. [09-21-2017]
*For guidance on specific questions with respect to charitable donations, NGOs, and the scope of General License No. 5, please reach out to OFAC. Contact information may be found here.
starving people put pressure on and or oust their current leaders
lets see who they love more.... kim or food. (the choice is clear for most folks)
Hmmmm, one has to wonder where all that food ends up. Kim is a fat little bastard.........but, I mean, he wouldn't starve his people while he ate well, right? /sarc off
That's a very, very sick joke... Those people are STARVING...
yes,,, reality is often akin to a sick joke.
c'est la vie :)
Do you consider indifference to human suffering a quality?
Their boy dictator sure hasn't missed any meals.
Is that a reason to be in favor of the embargo... or against it?
See 7.1.1 above.
I want whatever gets his people fed.
Let's remind ourselves of the virtuous cycle versus the vicious cycle:
As it pertains to NK, a great deal of their population is starving, because 1)the government is spending most of their budget on weapons and themselves and 2)because of "1)" their aid has been drastically cut. 1) begets 2) and the nation starves.
If NK abandons their goal of nuclear capabilities, they will 1)have a significantly larger store of capital to feed their people and 2)other nations would be more inclined to send them aid, should they continue to need it.
Just because the choice is not obvious to the leader of NK, does NOT mean that it's our fault that they're starving.
Nor that we are doing anything to end their starving... which might bring us some good will... hmmm??
We are not their keepers. Their leader is.
From other stories I have read......they have been starving for a long time. Embargos or not!