In an Interview with South Korea's Largest News Agency, Secretary-General Kang Calls for Expanding NGOs’ Autonomy in Inter-Korean Exchanges
“We are now into the third year of President Moon Jae-in’s administration, yet South Korean NGOs are far from recovering a major role in providing aid to North Korea,” said Kang Young-Sik, the secretary-general of the Korean Sharing Movement (KSM). He added that their total amount of aid provision is lower than that in late the 2000s, when Korea began experiencing a major shift in policy towards North Korea under President Lee Myung-bak who retracted the “sunshine policy” of previous administrations’.
Pointing out that the only years South Korean NGOs failed to set foot in North Korea were 2016 and 2017, Kang urged both governments to expand NGOs’ role in interacting with North Korea, regardless of the shifting political environment.
Kang reflects on the government’s insistence on seon guan hu min: government first, civic groups kater. “I understand its [the government's] effort to avoid breaching UN sanctions but there is a prevailing sentiment that the government is ‘excessively’ retaining control of the dialogue.”
“After years of confrontation under administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, many believe that under the Moon administration exchanges between two Koreas are flourishing across the board.”
Kang states that the reality is very different. The numbers speak for themselves: KSM’s average humanitarian assistance amounts to North Korea remained around 7~8b KRW annually throughout the 2000s. From the 2010s, it saw a drastic decline, and in 2017 plunged to 390m KRW. Although it recovered to 1b KRW last year, it is still a disappointing performance in comparison with the amounts delivered over the previous decade.
Kang believes that the solution lies in autonomy: “The key element of exchange and cooperation projects is sustainability. Repeatedly halting and then restarting cooperation projects is worse than inaction. Building trust with North Koreans takes time, while destroying it can happen overnight.”
Central government, local government, and civic groups – the three major players in Inter-Korean exchanges – all have their own strengths and weaknesses. In such circumstance a division of responsibilities is critical. Kang asserts that bargaining power and independence in execution are NGOs’ fortes. For these to be utilized, NGOs' autonomy must be guaranteed.
A lack of such dynamics is manifest especially in agricultural assistance programs. When an NGO submits an annual blueprint for the construction of for example a model farm, it should be enough for the central government to decide on approval for the entire plan. However, even if overall approval is granted, when each step of the plan is to be implemented approval needs to be sought again and again. A detailed plan for each step then takes up to 20~30 days each time.
Furthermore, the role of local governments is no longer even mentioned in laws related to Inter-Korean cooperation and exchange. Under President Roh Moo-hyun, the predecessor of President Lee, local governments were stated as one of the main actors in promoting cooperation but such a statement was discarded under the Lee administration, and remains excluded to this day.
Kang claims that change should also come from the North as well. As of now, the only channel through which North Korea coordinates with South Korea is the KCRC (Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation), a subordinate organization of the Workers’ Party. The KCRC is composed of three major departments. The cooperation department is responsible for communicating with local government and civic groups in South Korea, while the society & culture department deals with media and academia. For major Inter-Korean joint events, a specially designated “office” is in charge. In order to revitalize mutual exchange among organizations from both sides, North Korea should broaden the conduit so that Southern and Northern organizations can contact each other directly.
The suffocative UN sanctions are another woe for KSM. Contrary to the common wisdom that sanction exemptions based on humanitarian causes are easy, the process is long and challenging. That many American and other NGOs are spending large amounts of money hiring lawyers to attain exemptions articulates the situation, he says.
Sanctions impede assistances even at the most basic level. Greenhouses for model farms and nurserys, syringes for fighting malaria and pesticide sprayers are all ensnared because of their composition – the pipes inside greenhouses, syringes' needle, and parts of sprayers made of steel, there are all included in the sanctions list. A request for exemption on humanitarian grounds can take up to 10 months.
In short, for each project NGOs have to receive permission from both the government and the UN, with documentation and procedural responsibilities with regard to exemption solely on the NGO's shoulders. With such a ‘hands-off’ approach, the government merely approves or disapproves and transfers documents to the UN. Kang urged the government, to the extent that it approves something, to endeavor to assist in gaining UN approval.
KSM has transformed the nature of its projects from emergency relief assistance to developing structures that can improve the livelihoods of North Koreans, though both share the intrinsic goal of solving humanitarian situation. Among the top priorities have been agricultural and health projects. In an example of agriculture assistance, KSM has transferred enhanced agricultural technologies and equipment to collective farms. With regards to healthcare, KSM has expanded pharmaceutical production facilities to fundamentally resolve the issues of inadequate medicine supply chains.
NGOs that seek humanitarian assistance began to face major predicaments in April 2009 when North Korea carried out a ballistic missile test. The 5.24 measures announced in the following year by President Lee Myung-bak in response to confrontations and the Cheonan incident, in which a South Korean corvette was allegedly torpedoed by North Korea, were a fatal blow to inter Korean assistance and exchange projects. Succession of such a policy style under the Park administration resulted in “complete destruction of the Inter-Korean cooperation ecosystem”, said Kang.
Although KSM’s assistance and exchange projects were considerably constrained during this period, it is notable and has been widely acknowledged that KSM succeeded in sustaining a certain level of momentum for rapprochement and the unification movement during this time.
translated by Young Min Kim
KSM Intern
