No thanks, we’d rather let them starve to death

North Korea has refused a new consignment of American food aid, and has ordered five American aid groups to leave by the end of this month. Why do this, you may ask? Evidently, just to be assholes:

Joy Portella, a spokeswoman for one of the groups affected by the decision to stop accepting food aid, Mercy Corps, said they were ordered to leave with any reason being given.

“North Korea has informed the United States that it does not wish to receive additional US food assistance at this time,” state department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters in Washington.

“We are obviously disappointed,” Mr Wood said. “Clearly this is food assistance that the North Korean people need. That’s why we are concerned.” [BBC]

The best available evidence suggests that while the regime has been relatively well stocked with cash and food for the elites since last fall, people in rural areas continue to go hungry, and that their lot during the period starting last year has been as bad as any since the Great Famine. Portella, for his part, says that North Korea suffers from “rampant malnutrition.” The other private aid groups are World Vision, Global Resource Services, Samaritan’s Purse, and Christian Friends of Korea. Not among them — the Eugene Bell Foundation, which does in fact do good works for a relative few North Koreans with tuberculosis, but which also acts as an apologist for the regime’s democidal food policies and helps perpetuate the suffering of many more. “Useful” groups like EBF typically get to stick around.

It’s worth remembering where the North Korean government spends its money while foreign governments and aid groups scrimp to feed North Korea’s “expendable” population.

There’s no word yet on whether North Korea will allow U.N. aid workers to remain:

The United Nations said on Monday that 6.9 million North Koreans have not received food aid they desperately need. [….]

The World Food Programme, which also works extensively in North Korea, has yet to hear anything about whether non-US agencies are also affected. But Robin Lodge, a spokesman for the programme, said he was very concerned.

North Korea is now entering the most critical period of the year for food aid, he said – where stocks from the previous harvest are starting to run out and it is too early for the next harvest.

“We’re very worried that people could be seriously hungry there,” he said. “We estimate that nearly nine million people are in serious need of food aid.”

There’s nothing very surprising about this to careful observers of this regime. When the elite start to suffer, as they had by last spring, the regime makes concessions on monitoring and distribution of foreign food aid. NGO’s and aid organizations celebrate their hard-won gains, and a few may even claim that the regime really is changing its character. Once the regime thinks it can meet the basic needs of the elite and the military, it reneges on any concessions or kicks the aid organizations out.

Until the spreading market system reaches throughout North Korean society, there are exactly three ways to get food to the North Koreans who really need it: (a) overthrow the regime; (b) clear the skies and parachute the aid in; or (c) use sanctions to make the elite share the insecurity and pain of the peasants. In case you didn’t figure this out on your own, (b) is wildly unlikely, and (a) probably won’t happen except as a collateral effect of (c).