North Korea Food Crisis: Weekly Update #2

September 12, 1997

Background

Further evidence emerging last week from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) leaves little doubt that the nation faces a significant food crisis with the potential to cause tremendous human suffering and political and economic havoc. Reports from China and from recent visitors to North Korea indicate increasing desperation among hungry North Koreans and dangerously depleted levels of food availability.

Simultaneously, the U.S. response to the famine gained new impetus as the first shipments of U.S. government food commodities arrived in Pyongyang. CARE and the consortium of humanitarian agencies involved in the relief effort began moving the food to participants in a disaster rehabilitation program. The program will provide 371,720 North Koreans families with daily food rations in exchange for work on restoring dams and dikes destroyed by Typhoon Winnie.

Additional food, scheduled to arrive in the coming months, will be distributed to schools and senior-citizen centers to help those institutions continue to serve North Korea's most vulnerable populations during the food crisis.

The consortium of aid agencies is now fully operational, working from a temporary office in Pyongyang. The agencies are:

=B0 CARE USA
=B0 Catholic Relief Services
=B0 Amigos Internacionales
=B0 Mercy Corps International
=B0 World Vision Relief and Development

The consortium communicates regularly with the North Korean Government's Flood Damage Rehabilitation Commission (FDRC), the World Food Programme (WFP) office in Pyongyang, and the various headquarters concerned.

Recent Developments

Phase 1: Typhoon Relief Project Begins Activities

After the inter-agency agreement was signed on Sept. 4, monitoring activities began last week for a food-for-work (FFW) project that will provide daily rations to 371,000 families affected by Typhoon Winnie in exchange for their work on dikes damaged by the storm. The team surveyed initial activities in five counties, and is moving forward with the WFP and the FDRC on recommendations for improved commodity management and allocation.

Phase II: Reaching Children and the Elderly

In addition to the typhoon relief program, the consortium is developing plans to distribute the balance of the 55,000 metric tons of food across the entire country to nearly 3 million North Koreans between now and November 1997. Last week, the consortium shared with the WFP and the FDRC a draft distribution plan that targets populations currently neglected by food distributions programs -- namely, children aged 7-11 and the elderly. The plan calls for institutional feeding at schools and senior citizen centers and also targets heads of households through a food-for work program reaching 250,000 households. As reflected in the table below, the child feeding program will attempt to cover the entire country (with attention paid to ensure no overlap with food provided by other sources), while the senior citizen and food-for-work programs will focus in the eastern provinces of North and South Hamgyong and southern Ryangang.

Draft Distribution Plan:
=A0

Congressional Staff Report Finds 'Urgent Need' and Calls for Strict Food Monitoring

A visit to North Korea by key staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations has confirmed an urgent need within the country for more food and calls for strict monitoring measures to ensure that the food reaches the neediest population. The report stresses that the coming weeks will be the most critical in North Korea, as families await the harvest period in late September. It states that the food being provided through the World Food Program and the humanitarian consortium is "saving lives."

"It was clear," write the two staffers, Mark Kirk and Amos Hochstein, "that many children depend almost entirely on the food donated by the international community to survive." The report also notes that the Government of North Korea must abide by its commitment to allow the food monitors free access to distribution activities, and that future assistance must be made conditional on the government's support of a fair and effective relief effort.

The Kirk-Hochstein report also makes a strong recommendation to consider expanding the scope of U.S. bilateral assistance to include medical and oral rehydration therapy supplies. Hospital stores of these critical basic medicines are dangerously low, and health centers cannot keep up with the flow of patients. In summary, the visitors said they found that the presence of the humanitarian consortium is an important support to the success of the WFP food distribution, and that the group should continue its work in North Korea for as long as large-scale international assistance is necessary.

Other CARE Activities

CARE USA is seeking additional donations of food to augment the aid being provided through the humanitarian consortium. With hunger far exceeding available food supplies, CARE hopes to find additional donors to help meet the urgent need for food. With CARE already operational, there is a significant opportunity to ensure effective food distribution and help head off the growing food crisis.

With German support, CARE International has initiated procurement for its project to purchase and distribute winter clothing. CARE International is also developing a longer-term strategy focusing on food security.