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Chapter 6 Conclusion and Future Prospects
This final chapter briefly reviews the research questions, research expectations and key findings covered in the previous chapters and discusses the current situation and future prospects for North Korean food security.
At the time of writing, the latest situation regarding food security in North Korea is that, after another major famine in 2011, the country still faced serious food insecurity in 2012. In November 2012, the WFP and FAO estimated that “2.8 million vulnerable people, equal to slightly more than 10 percent of all North Koreans, face under nutrition and a lack of vital protein and fat in their daily diet” (Human Rights Watch Country Summary - North Korea 2013)”. Reasons for continued food insecurity in North Korea, as elaborated by Human Rights Watch, are several:
economic mismanagement; the government’s inadequate food policies that favor the military and government officials; and weather conditions that heavily impacted on the soybean production in the first half of 2012.
Although the famine took place in the 1990s and, in response, the international community started to provide food and other humanitarian assistance, North Koreans lack sufficient food supplies to this day. In 2013, the WFP had donor nations give food and other humanitarian aid valued at around US$150 million. Despite such massive investments in aid, 84 percent of North Korean households in 2013 had
“borderline” or “poor” levels of food consumption (Stanton and Lee 2014). Why is there this lack of correlation between the quantity of food aid delivered and the
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resulting level of hunger? The situation has persisted now for nearly20 years. It existed in Kim Jong-il’s era, and the situation has not improved under the leadership of Kim Jong-Un.
In previous chapters, the author tried to answer the following questions. Under the leadership of Kim Jong-il, was the famine issue alleviated? Was the bilateral and international food aid sufficient to relieve North Koreans of hunger? Which factors have contributed to food security in North Korea? What was the key factor that caused the mid-1990s famine in North Korea? Given the circumstances, how can food insecurity in North Korea be addressed?
6-1 Kim Jong-il and the Famine
According to a timeline provided by BBC News (North Korea Profile 2014), in 1995, a year after the death of Kim Il-sung, extreme flooding took place and caused the famine, with the same situation repeating in the following years. However, while its citizens faced starvation, in 1996, Kim Jong-il announced that it would no longer abide by the armistice that ended the Korean War and sent troops into the demilitarized zone. In September of the same year, a North Korean submarine with 25 crewmembers infiltrated South Korean territorial waters and ran aground in Gangneung on the east coast of South Korea. The above episode shows how Kim Jong-il treated his people and prioritized issues of national security. Kim Jong-il believed that the military comes before livelihood issues or its citizens’ lives. Then, South Korean president Kim Young-sam decided to reduce food aid through governmental channels, and South Korean NGOs became more active between 1996
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Another example repeated in 1998 after the UN food aid program went in to help famine victims in North Korea. Nevertheless, Kim Jong-il launched Taepodong-1, an intermediate-range ballistic missile on August 3Taepodong-1, 1998 that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, Pyongyang claimed it had fired a satellite and not a missile. Did Kim Jong-il cause the famine? No, he didn’t, but he ignored the serious situation and focused on what he saw as in the national interest, placing the military before other major concerns. While the extreme weather and floods, which led to severe shortages in grain production, caused the famine Kim Jong-il neglected the issue and allowed the famine to worsen, even when the international community tried to solve the famine. Kim Jong-il paid attention to how to develop and improve his military power to keep his regime from being toppled by the Clinton administration.
6-2 Was Food Aid Enough?
When pouring the water into a broken bottle, it is meaningless to discuss whether there is enough water to fill up the bottle or not. This is what has happened with international food aid in North Korea. The difference is that North Korea is not a broken bottle but had a leader that did not want the bottle to fill up.
After the 1990s famine took place, the international community, including IGOs, such as the WFP, FAO, UNICEF, Red Cross International; major donor countries, such as the U.S., the ROK, China, and Japan; and NGOs around the world immediately focused their attention on the serious problem and tried to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people by providing abundant food and other
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humanitarian aid to North Korea. Nevertheless, even after two decades, the problem persists.
At the peak of the famine, the North Korean government could have closed the food gap by importing around $150 million worth of food annually, which would have been just 1–2 percent of its national income (Stanton and Lee 2014). However, the government did not work that way. Instead, Kim Jong-il used foreign food aid to supplement and substitute Pyongyang’s commercial food imports in order to reduce expenditures. In 1997, the Pyongyang government also diverted a huge portion of its capital for military purposes instead of importing more grains to deal with the famine.
In the same year, the Kim Jong-il regime spent around $6 billion on its defense budget, including a missile development program (Watanabe 1997). Was food aid enough? According to the statement made by WFP, “there is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.” One is safe to make the conclusion that the famine in North Korea in the 1990s was more a man-made disaster than a natural one. The crux is that the North Korean government might not have really wanted to solve the famine if it meant sacrificing state power.
6-3 Key Factors Leading to Food Insecurity in North Korea
The key factors that lead to food insecurity in North Korea are the political structure in the DPRK, its autocratic government, and the overriding concern for national interests for both North Korea and donors. These could be divided into external and internal factors. The internal ones include the extreme weather
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PDS implementation, military first policy). The external factors are the quantity of food donations, the willingness of other countries to provide aid, and these states’
calculations of their respective national interests.
The US, the ROK, and China are the three main countries that have the capability and the willingness to deal with North Korean food insecurity. Why are they willing to help this troubled neighbor? Although the basic concern for human wellbeing plays a role in the provision of food aid, concern for national interests is another key factor. Due to the unpredictable military movements of the North Korean government, including the development of nuclear weapons, weapons testing, and the flow of refugees and defectors to neighboring countries, the stability of North Korea is in the best interests of those countries.
In addition, Russia, China and South Korea share borders with North Korea.
The CIA World Factbook shows that China accounted for an estimated 63 percent of North Korea's exports and 73 percent of imports in 2012. South Korea accounted for 27 percent of exports and 19 percent of imports (CIA 2014). China and South Korea are the most important trade partners for North Korea. Further destabilizing the relationship between either pair of nations would harm their trading interests.
Moreover, basic political calculations suggest that “Beijing feels it is safer to have North Korea on its border than U.S. ally South Korea (Cullinane 2013).” This shows the importance of North Korea to China’s national interest in the Korean Peninsula.
Nonetheless, both China and South Korea are afraid of revolutionary change in North Korea. Paul Wolfowitz, the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, once said that
“China and the ROK recall the flow of refugees from East Germany before the fall of
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the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East German government and worry about a repeat of these events in North Korea” (Wolfowitz 2009). Given these major concerns, humanitarian assistance from China and the ROK, instead of political condemnation or military intimidation, probably has been seen as the better approach to solving North Korean provocations. The reason is that both China and South Korea have calculated precisely and put their national interests above humanitarian considerations in supporting regime change in North Korea.
On the other hand, the US sees food aid toward North Korea as a source of leverage. By controlling the quantity of food aid and its willingness to donate, the US has used food aid as an incentive for the North Korean government to discontinue its nuclear program. Several times in the history of North Korea–U.S. relations, the U.S.
has tried to hold up food aid in the hope that this would lead Pyongyang to cooperate on the nuclear issue by either abiding by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) or returning to the Six-Party Talks. Furthermore, the U.S.
has also tried to coerce North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons program in return for food aid from the U.S. (ACA 2014). The US and South Korea have also tried to slow down the flow of food and other assistance to North Korea in exchange for North Korean government concessions on nuclear issues (Cronin 2012). Whether or not the food aid for North Korea could succeed in effectively serving U.S. national interests is questionable, but Washington has nevertheless used the tactic in its effort to gain leverage and put pressure on Pyongyang.
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6-4 The Alleviation of Food Insecurity in North Korea
There are five ways to alleviate the food insecurity in North Korea. These are providing food directly to the people, conducting transparent assessment, separating politics from humanitarian assistance, integrating activities of NGOs, and dealing with the defectors properly.
Delivering food aid directly to the people, rather than relying the government to do so through the PDS, would be the first thing that donor countries and other food aid institutions could do to address food insecurity. Corruption among high officials in North Korea and the PDS system are major obstacles for food aid to be effectively utilized. Although the North Korean government has the right to distribute foreign food aid to its people, the donor countries can request that food aid is distributed based on certain conditions. In providing food aid, the donor countries can ask for the recipient country to deliver the food directly to the locals without the interruption from the government. This is easier said than done. Who has the more leverage against another can win the negotiation, the NGOs or the North Korean government?
NGOs have the motivation and passion to deal with the food issue in North Korea however NGOs still are lacking of power to confront with a country.
Secondly, the North Korean government should provide a transparent food aid assessment report to the donors annually. Otherwise, Pyongyang should let the foreign assessment teams enter the country and conduct the investigation freely. Only by precise evaluation of the result of international food aid, the donors can plan their future assistance plans based on the reports and bring more benefits more efficiently to those in need in North Korea. The food donors could also put more efforts into
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assessing the situation in China’s Northeastern region, especially Heilongjiang province. It is much easier to cross the border into China than into South Korea for those North Korean defectors. Moreover, most of the border-crossing North Koreans seek food and jobs in China. Heilongjiang province is an appropriate region for the food donors to pay attention to in order to better understand the food shortage and living conditions in North Korea. According to China CSR Map14, there is no NGO based in Heilongjiang province and deal with either food security or North Korean defectors issues.
The other important way to address food insecurity is the separation of political calculations and humanitarian assistance, especially in providing food aid to North Korea. The U.S. has used food aid as leverage or as a bargaining chip in negotiating with or threatening the North Korean government on the nuclear issue.
South Korean decision makers during the era of the Sunshine Policy also used humanitarian assistance as the tool to further its national interests. From a realist perspective, donor countries in the international community can be seen as pursuing relative gains and maximizing national interests. However, food should not be a tool to bargain with someone when they are in need. Donor countries could use the UN resolutions, the embargo strategy, or reducing economic assistance to exchange for cooperation on specific issues from the recipient countries. If the donors use food aid as a weapon to threaten the North Korean government, those donors are indirectly creating food insecurity in North Korea. The donors have the right to set up the donation conditions, but they need to focus on the food shortage, rather than political or security interests.
14 The CSR here refers to corporate social responsibility and the website link as follow:
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NGOs have put their efforts into North Korea in different regions and with different missions and purposes. It is important to have some kind of coordination and integration among NGOs. Although NGOs have different purposes and diverse professions, sharing information and comparing notes on their experiences could help them to better position themselves when dealing with the North Korean government.
Moreover, similar categories of NGOs could cooperate with each other based on the report investigated by WFP and FAO and plan their future missions together. By doing so, NGOs could reduce the amount of expenditures wasted on duplicate donations within the same region and more evenly distribute the resources to the people in North Korea.
Last but not least, it is crucial for the international community to deal with refugees and defectors more properly. Each year, refugees and defectors successfully exit North Korea and make it to China, the U.S., the ROK, or Southeast Asian countries. Some of those defectors try to share their opinions and experiences about their lives in North Korea with the public. Do those sharing campaigns conduct under their own wills, or under the “sweet carrot” provided by the NGOs?
Raising awareness about the reality and living conditions in North Korea through the refugees and defectors’ perspectives is a convincing and appropriate way to get more people to care about the issue. However, those who share their stories with the public may risk putting their families in North Korea in danger. The public has the right to know the facts about what happening in North Korea. Refugees and defectors have the rights to share their experiences of living in North Korea. NGOs
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that work to rescue refugees, such as NKHR and Liberty in North Korea, have the responsibility to protect those defectors’ families who still live there. Instead of commercializing how many defectors have been rescued from the mission, sharing the latest information with other institutions and food donors and protecting the defectors’ privacy at the same time would be the best way to save more lives in North Korea.
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