Quick Update: WFP and North Korean Food Aid

I simply don’t have the time to give this New York Times op-ed by Jason Lim a careful reading and thorough comment, but it suggests that the World Food Program has either backed down from or reversed its accomodation of North Korea’s no-strings “development aid” demands (or that original reports were not accurate). If so, kudos for the WFP.

More later, when I have more time.

Update: OK, read it. No, it doesn’t appear that the WFP has changed its position; at least this piece doesn’t add anything to that. What fooled me in my quick and cursory read of the op-ed was that the WFP opposes international aid outside its own monitored channels. That’s a long-time WFP position. Jason Lim’s op-ed is still a must-read for other reasons, however: for one, the quality of Lim’s writing, which is compact, minimalist, and economical with words. Here’s how he starts:

AFTER receiving copious amounts of food aid for 10 years, North Korea has asked the United Nations and other relief agencies to close their Pyongyang offices and withdraw their monitors by the end of the year. Such hostility may seem strange from a country whose citizens are starving. But in fact the reasoning is obvious: the more contact the relief agencies’ monitors have with North Korean citizens, the more information on the country’s human rights situation might leak to the outside world. What is not obvious, however, is why the South Korean government – which also provides food aid – is abetting North Korea’s shameless attempt to mask its crimes.

Immediately, he tells you what he means:

Pyongyang has plenty to hide. About 1.3 million to 2 million people have died of starvation in the last 10 years, despite the food aid. Public executions and forced abortions abound, and up to 200,000 of the country’s approximately 23 million inhabitants are said to be interned in forced labor camps. Not only might food aid program monitors come into contact with the country’s fearful and hungry people, but they might also reveal the extent of the government’s corruption and indifference. Recent reports suggest that as much as 50 percent of food aid to North Korea reaches the wrong people, and that the North Korean government has taken advantage of the aid in order to reduce its grain imports and divert the savings to building its military.

It’s not surprising, then, that North Korea has chosen to reject international food aid in order to keep monitors out. But Pyongyang can do this precisely because South Korea and China make up the difference by providing food aid with only minimal monitoring requirements.

At the risk of overgraffing this, I’ll just implore you to read every last word. Lim manages to tear Roh Moo Hyun a new one while still keeping the classically liberal high ground. Indeed, Lim manages to make Roh into an example of unilateralism at its worst. Lim, on the other hand, is arguing for multilateralism as it should be.

Will the United Nations and its World Food Program prove too leaky a vessel for those values?