Northern Exposure

Northern Exposure - JASON LIM: "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.

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. China provides food directly to the North Korean military, while South Korea gives food to the public distribution system controlled by the North Korean authorities. Just in the last year, South Korea sent 500,000 tons of food, making up for more than half of North Korea's estimated shortfall of 890,000 tons. Moreover, South Korea's president, Roh Moo Hyun, has proposed allocating $976 million this year (up from $488 million in 2004) for the inter-Korean cooperation fund, which is designated for supporting the North Korean economy.

If South Korea were to contribute its food aid through the United Nations' World Food Program rather than on its own, North Korea would have little choice but to accept international aid - and the monitoring that comes with it. The resulting transparency could help coax the reclusive society out into the open. Of course, that is exactly what the regime of Kim Jong Il is deathly afraid of. Like most dictatorships, the North Korean regime depends on controlling its citizens' exposure to outside information and creating an atmosphere of pervasive paranoia.

Both the World Food Program and the United States Committee of Human Rights in North Korea, which is the leading North Korean human rights research and advocacy group based in America, have called on South Korea to refrain from directly donating food to North Korea. But South Korea has refused either to cooperate with the World Food Program or to satisfactorily explain its decision. Do the South Koreans fear a North Korean implosion? Do they fear a military attack? Do they act from a misguided sense of kinship with North Korea?

No one is asking South Korea to stop providing food aid to North Korea's needy. But the international donor community would like the South Korean government to express its kinship with the people of North Korea rather than with their government.

The act of giving aid entails a responsibility to make sure that the aid helps the people it was intended to help. By refusing to cooperate with the international donor community, the South Korean government enables North Korea to hold its people's welfare hostage to the most selfish of political motives: in collusion with the government of South Korea, Pyongyang would rather see its people starve than let them talk to aid workers.

Jason Lim is a graduate student in management of international public service at New York University."