WASHINGTON – The Asia Program and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea hosted a public forum Monday on human rights and the food shortage crisis in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), the official name for North Korea.
"Ten years ago this spring, this past spring, North Korea appealed for outside assistance to address what was revealed to be a famine that ultimately killed ... somewhere between 600,000 to a million to 2.5 million to 3.5 million in North Korea. We'll never know for sure," said Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and co-author of Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea, as he opened his presentation.
Titled after the aforementioned publication, the program at the Woodrow Wilson Centre also featured speakers including Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Gordon Flake, executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.
"I would just point out that it was disturbing to think of it in terms of my own age," said Natsios, who started ten years ago. “Just watching what was going on and we're still at it now.”
The USAID administrator added that the famine in North Korea “was not so much as a result of crop failure or natural disasters as the North Korean government repeatedly suggested, but as a mass failure of governance and policy."
Speaking along the same lines, Noland noted that the political regime of the North is "the ultimate source of this misery."
More than 2 million tons of food has been shipped to North Korea exclusively through the U.N.'s World Food Program to date, according to Natsios. Yet with limited monitoring abilities from port to recipient, there has always been the question of who receives it and "who eats it."
Noland pointed out that supplies never went under the minimum human need in North Korea. Thus, the attention of the problem went toward public distribution, which is controlled by the state, and its key role in feeding the North Koreans.
"This was a tragedy that was created by the hand of man," said Noland. "This was not a tragedy created by acts of God."
Linking the food shortage crisis with human rights abuse in North Korea, Noland also drew attention to the 40 percent of refugees who said they were unaware of the existence of aid, according to a refugee survey conducted by Christine Chang for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
Stressing the source of the problem, Flake stated, "The fundamental problem is the nature of the North Korean regime."
North Korea recently demanded a halt to food aid that has fed millions of North Koreans over the past decade. In response to the impoverished nation's request, the U.N.'s World Food Program will stop emergency food shipments by January.
After presenting a small glass jar half-filled with rice as the daily portion received by a North Korean, Noland stated, "We care more about the North Korean people than the North Korean government does."
In recent months, religious groups and humanitarian rights advocates have been joining for rallies, prayer vigils and conferences, including Freedom House's first international conference on North Korean Human Rights in Washington, D.C. The July conference involved the participation of believers from such groups as the Christian Council of Korea, as well as U.S. and South Korean lawmakers.
As the reported human rights abuses in the North create a more urgent call to protect the North Koreans, churches worldwide joined in prayers this past week for Christian Solidarity Worldwide's Week of Prayer for North Korea, Sept. 19-25.
Lillian Kwon
Christian Today Correspondent
