KOREA REPORT
By Moon-Kyu Kang(Korea Sharing Movement)
It is my pleasure and honours to make a brief presentation on the activities of Korean Sharing Movement to you this morning. However, since we have no sets of an official version of report suitable to this meeting, we had an informal meeting last night among KSM participants here in Beijing. As usual we could hardly reach conclusion except few minor points. Therefore, I take my personal liberty in this presentation to reflect how do I assess general Korean sentiment with regard to NGO support activities for the North.
Korean Sharing Movement is a loose umbrella organizations of around 30 Korean NGOs aiming development assistance to the DPRK. We organised KSM three years ago when we heard food shortage in the North that reached to a critical point due to continued flood and drought calamity, so that a mass starvation seemingly taking place in the affected areas. Several other NGOs in the South are also doing their food campaigns.
As of December 1998 since 1995, rough estimation of total NGO givings to the North reached around 42 million US$ worth of grains and other daily commodity support within the KSM members. But this does not includes all Korean NGOs support to the North such as World Vision or Won Buddhism.
Major items of their supports are primarily supplying rice, flour, and meize. Major donors for these food supplies are carried by religious groups of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Buddhist group with some other organizations like trade unions and student groups. South Korean government giving so far is much higher than the total of NGOs . Government giving has been done through International Red Cross or WFP.
During the beginning stage of our support campaign for the North, we faced two major obstacles and they are still prevails even now to certain extend. The first burden that we had to break through was how to propagate our humanitarian appeal for the people of the North to general public of the South without falling into a trap of long standing enemy syndrome of the North-South relations. To be specific, why we support enemy regime in the name of humanitarian act that will eventually end-up with military aid to the North.
Second problems as we faced more practical issues were how to propel our food for hungry campaign under inactive government non-cooperation policy imposed upon to all levels of social sectors including NGOs. Under this circumstances our public campaigns was practically not easy as numerous subtle forms of interception that affected our campaign through public media or seeking cooperations from business circles. Furthermore, our food supply channeling to the North were being controlled by the government.
Now since January 1998 with new government of Kim Dae-Jung, who took his unification policy with far more flexible and positive attitude for reconciliations and cooperation, we are now better position to do any fund-raising activities or diversified channeling of our support items to the North including our direct contact and visit to the North. To be concrete we can tell the following three points in relation with what it called Sunshine Policy of Kim Dae-Jung Government.
a. March, 1998 - government defreezed restriction on NGO, media, or business world in engaging their free public fund-raising activities for the hungry North.
b. September, 1998 - Diversified channeling of South Korean NGOs support to the North according to their respective contact Point.
c. Virtually no restriction or controlling of South Korean visit to the North. (myself being able to visit the North already twice since last March, 1998.)
With this radical change of more reconciling policy toward the North NGOs support activities to the North are far more free and flexible, although we had to face unexpected ambush of IMF currency crisis since November, 1997, and our socio-political climate of South-North cooperation has been improving and consequently our NGOs level of support and exchange activities are improving.
We can note the following trends in our Korean NGO support activities:
a. Main trend is still grain supply to the North. In early stage we have done this through US-NGOs with American grain shipping from the West coast of the USA. Now we can buy much cheaper grains mainly Chinese meize from the North East part of China and transport by railroad via Dandong to the North.
b. Gradual diversification of supply items include clothes, shoes, live-stocks, medical items including numerous drugs and books.
c. Careful but patient negotiations for joint or cooperative farm activities in the field of agriculture, fishery, and medicine factory.
d. Increasing number of direct contact with the North for numerous exchange programs in the field of sports and culture or joint festival.
Two major concerns hopefully to be discussed in the Conference
What is our strategic projection or understanding with our perennial controversy between so called Humanitarian and non-humanitarian demarcation line in our support action to the North? This is not my extension of the repeating discussion on international standard, but to raise it in concrete and contextual situation of Korean peninsula where the North and the South perpetuates highly confrontational power relation during last half century.
Between the two, they can hardly agree each others on the question of humanitarian and political standard and category. I can give you a concrete example.
When the North and South governments delegates met right here in Beijing to discuss mutual humanitarian support in May last year, the North outlined the urgent humanitarian support of excess fertilizer to the North so that their agricultural productivities could be multiply, while the South insist their urgent humanitarian agenda is to make separated family reunion program as there are 10 million divided family suffer in the South but fertilizer supply is so highly political. The North felt family re-union is one of the highly sensitive political matters.
What I am trying to say to you is that your argument of humanitarian support with monitoring could sound a highly political demand in the name of humanitarian support. At least, it meant and affect highly political influences positive or negative to both the North and the South.
Monitoring and transparency request could be accepted standard international practice in ordinary aid action. But in such a highly confrontational contextual reality in the Korean peninsula we could be a little more tolerable before we impose our international standard. I would imagine what could be a negative effect when such a monitoring and transparency is not available. It may affect to a decline of fund-raising, or speculative estimation on death toll may spiral up together with wishful inflation in numbers. What we could do is not to polarize the case but try to bring a frame of standard that can accommodate both reality of donors and recipient.
Same appeal could also be made to the MSF and their withdrawal from the North out of their frustrated non-transparent circumstances in their work of medical cares. Wondering whether MSF could reconsider going back to the field and continue their medical service as humanitarian medical service be provided even to those enemy soldiers in battle ground.
Assessing our NGO assistance to DPRK with its future projection is our common concerns in this conference. I could note that there are some kind of frustrations among us out of last 4 years of assistance effect as the food crisis still continue in the North. Under this overall subject, we are all concerned in such a question as to the real cause of the basic nature of food and agricultural crisis in the North and then see what would be our long terms strategy to the situation because emergency situation should n t be perpetuating.
Without prolonging my presentation too much to touch upon the overall socio-political situational analysis of the North, I could simplify our assessment to few points for our further discussions.
Of course repeated calamity of floods and drought since 1995 was a direct effect of their already accumulated vulnerable agricultural structure. When we monitor their decline of agricultural productivity in the record it did already start since 1985 with their total grain productivity of 10 million metric tons as the peak. It means that decline of agriculture did start already 5-6 years before the collapse of Eastern block. Reason for that could be traced to the total agricultural policy assessment together with so-called Juche agricultural policy as well. Perhaps such a policy mistake or mis-calculation would be interpreted within the total government development policy of the North.
On the other, we are also wondering the relations between long standing US economic sanction and gradual down-fall of economic growth in the North. US economic sanction has been carried already for more than 40 years since the end of Korean War in 1953.
DPRK is now a member of the UN as a sovereign nation and they have their own right to survive apart from ideological disputes. A long standing sanction affect mostly to ordinary people s life. I think it is about time for those humanitarian NGOs to advocate the lifting of trade sanction and unfreezing North Korean assets held in the USA and acknowledge the legitimacy of DPRK.
So the time is right to recognize that the Cold War needs to end on the Korean Peninsula, that the familiar stalemate must be broken for future prospect of maintaining peace in the region and allowing for peaceful economic development for Korean Peninsula on both the South and the North.
