North Korea____________________________________________________________________
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Ending the Isolation
The famine that decimated the population of North Korea in 1997 is finally easing, thanks to
contributions from international humanitarian groups. But the people’s enduring poverty cannot be relieved as long as the country remains politically and economically isolated from the world community.

By CWR Staff

Year after year, prior to the collapse of the Communist government, authorities in the old Soviet Union would announce that the grain harvest had been disappointing. Invariably the authorities would explain that the weather conditions had been unfavorable, so that the government would be forced to import grain from the capitalist farmers of the West.

Late in the 1990s, the Western world gradually became aware that North Korea was experiencing a shortage of grain far more severe than anything the Soviet Union had ever disclosed. At first the country’s government, echoing the old line from Moscow, said that the shortage of food had been caused by several years of bad harvests, attributable to drought. Next, a bit paradoxically, the North Korean rulers blamed a series of floods in 1995. More objective outside analysts pointed out that the famine began shortly after the Communist regime ceased to receive regular subsidies from its erstwhile comrades in Moscow. But whatever the causes might have been, the crisis of hunger was obviously severe.

Because the country remains under the power of a strict Communist regime, which does its utmost to maintain absolute control over the flow of information, the crisis did not come to the attention of the outside world until thousands of Koreans had already died of starvation. Even now it is nearly impossible to say exactly how many people were affected by the famine that shook this Asian society. But because the government in Pyongyang was finally forced to seek help from abroad, Western observers have been able to piece together a few statistics that illustrate the severity of the problem.

Between the years 1995 and 2000, according to the best available estimates, at least 2.25 million people died of starvation in North Korea. That figure is one-tenth of the population currently claimed by the Pyongyang regime: 22.5 million. And the overall toll of the famine might actually be much higher. Although the government does not furnish statistics on the nation’s births and deaths, the official population figure dropped by one million during the course of 1999 alone.

By 1996, hunger had become the single dominant force in North Korean society. Faced with the very real prospect of starvation, citizens were ready to risk the wrath of one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Looting became commonplace; government storehouses were virtually under siege. Reluctantly, the isolationist government in Pyongyang asked the world for help. Even more reluctantly, when humanitarian agencies answered that call, the regime allowed aid workers a glimpse inside the previously closed society of North Korea.

Secondary effects

Since 1995, relief agencies have shipped millions of tons of supplies—primarily food grains—into North Korea. That international relief campaign has gradually eased the famine, enabling the government to restore public order. But the problem of hunger remains acute.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, North Korea is still years away from agricultural self-sufficiency. The UN agency estimates that for the year 2000 alone, North Korea will need 600,000 tons of food from abroad—all of it supplied at no cost—in order to avoid a new round of famine and starvation. Humanitarian organizations that originally moved into North Korea to provide short-term relief are now realizing that the crisis will endure for a matter of years; famine relief specialists at the UN are putting together a five-year plan for the delivery of an additional 1.5 million tons of foodstuffs.

But even if the arrival of these relief supplies can curb the death toll, the echoes of the famine will trouble North Korea for years. Tens of thousands of children have been left as orphans; many more will have serious developmental problems because of the malnutrition they suffered in infancy. Late last year, Dilawar Ali Khan of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) toured the country, and estimated that two-thirds of the children he saw in schools were seriously underweight. Khan observed that children in their mid-teens gave the appearance of being only 8 or 9 years old.

While most of the children Khan saw were receiving enough food to stay alive, their diet was still seriously inadequate. They were eating virtually nothing but cereal grains, the UNICEF official observed; they lacked protein, and a severe shortage of iodine in their diets threatened to retard their intellectual development. The ravages of famine were even being passed on to a new generation, as malnourished young mothers gave birth to malnourished babies. Naturally these infants were vulnerable to disease—as were their older siblings.

Opening a society

The years of famine also had a devastating effect on North Korea’s health-care system. Millions of people, weakened by hunger, fell prey to infectious diseases, overwhelming the capacity of the country’s hospitals and clinics. Medical supplies were exhausted, and of course many doctors and nurses were killed by the famine as well. When Pyongyang finally allowed outside agencies to enter the country, the first priority of the relief groups was to supply food. Only now, as the chains of food distribution have been formed, are humanitarian groups able to address the needs of the health-care system—which was seriously underfunded and badly antiquated even before the onset of the agricultural crisis.

If and when the relief groups succeed in establishing an adequate health-care system, they will still be left to face the ultimate cause of this disaster: the utter collapse of the country’s agricultural industry. North Korea has relied on the same system of collective farms that produced seventy years of disappointing harvests for the Soviet Union. The doctrinaire Communist leadership in Pyongyang has ignored the abundant evidence that this system is a failure. And because the government’s budget has given top priority to military expenditures, the collective farms have not been supplied with modern agricultural machinery. In short, farming in North Korea is done through a discredited system, using obsolete tools. Subsidies from Moscow had helped to camouflage the weakness of the system for years, but when those subsidies dried up, the famine was inevitable.

Now, belatedly, the government has recognized that North Korea cannot continue to live in isolation. The nation’s farms must be modernized, and modernization requires capital, and since the government has no surplus funds to invest, the capital must come from abroad. According to reports from South Korea, the Pyongyang government has quietly approached the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank, looking for loans that could be used to stimulate agricultural development.

If such loans are eventually approved, they will come with strings attached. International lenders will insist on a loosening of government controls over the economy, and a willingness to enter the global marketplace. New investors will also want to send representatives into North Korea, to see how their money is being used.

Such conditions will be difficult for the Communist government to accept, but Pyongyang really has no choice. Already the regime has shown an unprecedented willingness to accept visits and advice—as well as cash—from outsiders. The United States indicated that the delivery of emergency food supplies would be tied to promises that North Korea would suspend its efforts to develop nuclear weapons; Pyongyang grudgingly complied. Japan wanted access to the North Korean markets, and again the Communist regime acceded to that request. Relief agencies sent administrative officials to supervise the distribution of food and medical supplies, and the government allowed those visitors to move freely around the country—a marked change in policy for a country which for years had barred most visitors, and carefully restricted the travels of the few people who were admitted. “In the past,” one UN official noted, “international observers were seen as spies here. But that’s not true any more.”

The opening of a closed society has also provided new opportunities for evangelization among the people of North Korea. The Catholic Church has had no formal presence in the country since 1948, when the Communist regime of Kim Il Sung came to power and promptly expelled or imprisoned all Catholic priests. But since 1995 the Pyongyang government has happily welcomed four separate visits by officials from the Holy See. In each case the Vatican delegates brought food and medical supplies. But they also met with government leaders, and there can be little doubt that the Church officials pressed the case for religious freedom. For now Catholic relief workers are busy with the pressing physical needs of the people; in time they will address their spiritual hunger as well.

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