Food aplenty, but not for North
Koreans By David Scofield
While the United Nations urgently appeals for
food aid for severely malnourished North Koreans, that
nation has reaped a bumper harvest and there's food
aplenty - provided you can pay for it, and most people
cannot. In fact, South Korea is planning to import
chicken and duck meat from the North - initially just
100 tons, but with more to come.
According to a
recent appeal by UN aid agencies, more than one in four
people in North Korea is facing severe malnutrition as
the country faces a shortfall of at least 500,000 tonnes
of foodstuffs heading in to 2005. But this time it's not
the result of floods, drought or even the nefarious
maneuverings of the American imperialists that has
plagued the beleaguered North - it's market reform.
North Korea enjoyed a good crop this year and there's
food aplenty - provided one can afford it.
North
Korea's much-heralded market reforms of July 2002
ushered in huge price increases for staple crops. The
problem is that few outside of some core industries and
members of the "core" elite have received wage increases
in any way commensurate with the increase in food
prices. Indeed, as compared with the US dollar, the
North Korean won has depreciated an average of 10% per
month over the past two years. The result is growing
legions of urban poor, suffering from malnutrition and
accompanying disease, while food is sold to the highest
bidder.
Of course this is not the first time
North Korea's propensity for protecting and enriching
its ruling elite and building its nuclear program have
led to accusations of gross misappropriation of vital
food resources. The UN World Food Program (WFP) and the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) continue to
admit that spot inspections of food aid delivery are
infrequent and closely managed by the government, but
for those involved in the effort, the triumph of saving
even one family from famine far outweighs the reality of
many more families not receiving anything. This
deprivation is assured as the despots who rule the
enfeebled masses ensure that their hierarchy and their
loyal supporters are properly, often excessively, fed
and nourished through the largess of the world
community.
South Korea's economic overtures
toward the North are designed, it is assumed, to tackle
the growing morass in the North Korean economy, and in
turn alleviate the suffering of the masses. Beyond
high-profile projects such as the tourist resort in
North Korea's Diamond Mountains - operated through
long-term lease by division of Hyundai - and the
light-manufacturing park in Kaesung, the South Korean
government has been actively encouraging its firms to do
business with the North in a bid to instill market
principles and, ostensibly, to use the power of
political economics to pry open the closed nation. But
the result has been something else again.
Far
from offering more opportunities and a better standard
of living to the average North Korean, modest economic
liberalization has proved a most efficient method to
enrich further the country's rulers and the highest
strata of the elite, while postponing development and
continuing the famine for millions.
The "market
liberalization" scheme in North Korea created an
immediate windfall for those who held hard currency
(read: friends of the leadership), as the official
exchange rate was adjusted to reflect more accurately
the value of the currency. Today the North Korean won
trades "unofficially" at around 1,600 won to the US
dollar, up from 153 in July 2002.
But the
reforms have also helped farmers recoup more from their
harvest and allowed them to sell excess produce in
markets, a radical change from three years ago when such
markets existed but were still illegal. Indeed, if North
Korea's demographic structure had been closer to that of
China, the reforms might well have helped the economies
of countless villages, towns and cities. But unlike
China at the beginning of its modernization drive in
1989, North Korea is not a country of farmers. In North
Korea 61% of the population lives in urban areas, so
with the price of foodstuffs rising (a one-kilogram bag
of rice now costs about 30% of an average North Korean
worker's monthly wage), urban dwellers, especially those
outside of the capital Pyongyang, continue to grow
hungry and desperate.
With unmitigated
arrogance, the North Korean leadership remains
indifferent to the plight of the starving urban masses,
relegating responsibility to the international community
- nothing for the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il to be
concerned about. The savings to the country and the
resources it frees by having the world feed the
desperate millions is great. Illicit nuclear programs,
missile development and just maintaining multiple
millions of soldiers under arms ready to lay waste to
their chief benefactor in the South presupposes a
tremendous outlay of state resources. Indeed, according
to a recent study by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American
Enterprise Institute, North Korea is running an all-time
trade deficit, importing in 2002, for example, US$900
million more than it received in exports, an almost
20-fold increase from $50 million in 1997. This means
that while citizens continue to suffer, the North Korean
government is importing more than at any time since the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The
political nature of the incessant North Korean famine is
something many from the "pro-North Korea engagement"
camp like to ignore. But the numbers clearly indicate
that North Koreans have starved and continue to die due
in great measure to the callous disregard among North
Korea's supreme leader to the lives of those he rules.
The WFP says $1.5 billion has been spent on food aid to
North Korea since 1995. Yet missile sales in 2001 alone
amounted to $560 million, according to US military
officials. In 1998 North Korea's then vice foreign
minister Kim Kay-gwan estimated income from missile
exports at $500 million a year. Indeed, North Korean
defector testimony has put the worth of missile sales
and conventional arms exports at 40% of the country's
gross domestic product (GDP). Then of course there are
the hundreds of millions gleaned through illicit drug
exports and counterfeit-currency proliferation. Missile,
drug and currency exports amount to many times the funds
the WFP mobilized to help feed those North Koreans
unlucky enough to have been born outside the loyal "core
class".
But few are talking about that.
Instead, in the spirit of reconciliation and
rapprochement, South Korea is readying an import license
for a small South Korean firm to begin importing duck
and chicken meat from North Korea - 100 tons initially.
So while the UN's WFP and FAO scramble to find the aid
to feed the millions of North Korea's starving urban
poor, one South Korean importer will be able to reap the
immediate economic benefits of cheap meat from the
North. It's little wonder many of South Korea's younger
generation are increasingly convinced that stories of
famine in the North are nothing more than US propaganda.
And so it is with South Korea's many and varied
economic-engagement plans with North Korea. The poor
suffer, the Northern leadership further enriches itself,
the myth of the workers' paradise in the North continues
to gain traction in the South, and the rest of the world
is on the hook to feed those whom Kim Jong-il deems less
than deserving of life. As one South Korea-based analyst
put it, "Ain't capitalism grand?"
David
Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute
of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently
conducting post-graduate research at the School of East
Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, United
Kingdom.
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