MUST READ: Report on N.K. Food Aid Distribution

Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard have a new report out for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. It appears to be extremely detailed and rigorous–just what you’d expect from Marcus Noland. There is much to read and I haven’t been through all of it yet, but what they’re essentially saying is that the famine is a part of North Korea’s machinery of oppression (a drum I’ve been beating for some time now). Here’s an executive summary, kindly forwarded by of one of HRNK’s senior members:

Ongoing food shortages in North Korea are directly linked to systematic human rights abuses and the complete absence of political and personal liberties. Despite the best intentions of the international community, North Korea has placed a variety of roadblocks in the way of assistance by both governments and nongovernmental organizations. Pyongyang’s refusal to allow full monitoring of food delivery and need, and restrictions on the movement of aid workers continue to impede the aid effort and limit its ability to reach vulnerable groups, according to a new report being released on Thursday.

The report also shows that as international assistance increased, North Korea substituted international aid for its own commercial imports of food. The government is now paying for only about ten percent of the food coming into the country, allowing it to shift resources to other priorities, including military ones. Additionally, substantial international food aid is diverted to the elite, the military, other non-deserving groups, and increasingly to the market as well.

Noland and Haggard first made the charge that North Korea reacted to food aid by shifting its cash to purchasing “commercial” imports in a congressional hearing last spring.