As the Millions Die, the Billions Sleep

Updated; scroll down.

We are now four months from the next Great North Korean Famine, and rather than making the urgent and public appeals that could stop it, the United Nations is issuing a permit. Just one month after the World Food Program issued an urgent appeal stating that 6.5 million North Koreans depend on its food aid for their survival, it has capitulated to North Korea’s demand to cease delivering food aid in favor of “development aid” that will be neither distributed nor monitored by anyone outside the North Korean government itself. Do past events leave any doubt about how Pyongyang will allocate the blank check it demands for this “development aid?” The result will be that Kim Jong Il will continue the political cleansing of North Korea’s hostile classes.

It’s incomprensible that this story isn’t getting more coverage from the media. Here on Planet Kafka, the only way to gain immediate, international, and expansive recognition of your human rights is to join a terrorist organization. The subjects of terrorist regimes merit less outrage than veal calves. I can make no moral sense of this. All I can do is to keep a ledger of my futile curses at the darkness.

Update: Three Cheers for Jay Lefkowitz! From an interview in today’s New York Sun (HT: The Flying Yangban):

In order to get new aid to North Korea, President Bush will have to ask for special appropriations from Congress. One of those appropriators, Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas who sits on the subcommittee that approves foreign aid spending in the Senate, yesterday told the Sun that he wanted to attach conditions on the aid to the sorts of human rights reforms Mr. Lefkowitz is seeking.

“This needs to include Helsinki type provisions in the overall work with the North Korea regime,” Mr. Brownback said referring to the accords American negotiators used in talks with the Soviet Union to press for the release of political prisoners. “We need to have a human rights track in dealing with the North Koreans. I am hoping we will have some opportunities in the appropriations process with energy and other needs to come forward.”

Mr. Lefkowitz yesterday stressed that America would not delay food shipments to extract advantages in negotiations, but that Mr. Bush’s commitment to feed hungry North Koreans was not a license for Mr. Kim to divert aid to his own purposes. “The United States is genuinely committed to humanitarian aid and we will not use food aid for political purposes,” Mr. Lefkowitz said. “But we are very concerned about reports that humanitarian aid is diverted and does not reach the people to whom it’s intended.” Asked about other forms of humanitarian aid America might consider now, Mr. Lefkowitz said that offering child vaccinations or women’s health care might be additional areas in which America could play a constructive role in North Korea.

This is precisely what Lefkowitz needed to say in reaction to some of the distortions of his recent statements. And yes, I’m absolutely in favor of vaccinating kids anywhere, anytime. If you don’t see why, have a few yourself.