Global Policy Forum

By Joe Mcdonald

The World Food Program has been forced to cut off food aid to 2.7 million North Korean women and children during the height of the country's harsh winter because of a lack of foreign donations, an agency spokesman said Monday. The U.N. agency received new promises of aid from the United States, European Union and Australia after warning in December of an impending crisis, but those supplies could take up to three months to arrive, spokesman Gerald Bourke said. The agency is trying to feed nearly a third of North Korea's people.

The food crisis coincides with efforts to arrange new talks on the standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Despite diplomatic tensions, two leading critics of the North's nuclear program — the United States and South Korea — are among its biggest food donors, and the WFP says no governments have cited the nuclear issue as a factor in deciding whether to contribute. Aid shortfalls forced the WFP to start cutting food distributions in December to more than half of its 4.2 million "core beneficiaries" — children, pregnant women and elderly people, said Bourke, who works for the agency's Beijing office. "In January, 2.7 million of our `core beneficiaries' are not being fed," he said. Already in December, he said, "there were quite a few people we were not able to feed."

North Korea's isolated Stalinist regime has relied on foreign aid to feed its people since revealing in the mid-1990s that its state-run farming industry had collapsed following decades of mismanagement and the loss of Soviet subsidies. WFP plans this year to feed a total of 6.2 million of the North's 20 million people — "core beneficiaries" plus people who are paid with food for doing farming and other work. That amounts to 40,000 tons of food aid a month — mostly rice, wheat, corn, sugar and high-protein wheat biscuits.

Spokespeople for the U.S. and EU missions in Seoul, South Korea, and Beijing said they knew of no plans for any official emergency action in response to the drop in food supplies. In Seoul, an official of the Unification Ministry said on condition of anonymity that South Korea has not yet decided how much food and other aid to provide to the North this year.

It is unclear how the people cut from WFP programs are surviving, though some might receive small rations from the North's autumn harvests of rice and corn, Bourke said. This year, the North's harvests are expected to fall 1 million tons — or about 20 percent — short of what it needs, according to aid agencies. They say they cannot foresee a time when the North will be able to feed itself without outside help.

The cutbacks come as temperatures in the North drop below freezing and supplies of fuel for heat and lighting run low. Daytime highs this week in the capital, Pyongyang, are forecast to be about 6. "North Korean winters are very cold. This one is no exception," Bourke said. "When you're both hungry and cold, things are terrible."

The WFP appealed last month for emergency donations, saying that without more aid, the number of North Koreans cut from its programs could swell to 3.8 million by winter's end. In December, the United States pledged 60,000 tons of food, the equivalent of six weeks' supply for WFP programs, Bourke said. The EU promised $6.2 million, enough to buy about 9,700 tons of aid, while Australia also promised a donation. However, it can take three months for supplies shipped from the United States to reach North Korea, Bourke said. "Until we know when the food is going to be shipped, it's hard to know the impact," he said.

Foreign donors have supplied more than 8 million tons of food to North Korea since the mid-1990s. But WFP officials have struggled in recent years to meet aid targets for the North, getting as little as 60 percent of the food they need each year. Their target for this year is 485,000 tons of donations.

A key issue for donors has been the North's restrictions on the ability of foreign agencies to monitor who receives food aid. The United States and others have expressed concern that supplies might be diverted to the North's huge military or to reward supporters of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. While the North has expanded access for the WFP to check where its food goes, Bourke said, "we have more restrictions in North Korea than we have elsewhere, and donors' patience is wearing thin."

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