[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 133 (Tuesday, September 24, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11192-S11193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

              UNITED STATES' RELATIONSHIP WITH NORTH KOREA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the Members of Congress who 
has contributed significantly more than most of us is Congressman Tony 
Hall.
  His emphasis on helping people in need has sharpened the conscience 
of many policymakers, though it has not sharpened it enough.
  He has provided leadership in areas that most Members of Congress 
ignore, such as Eritrea.
  Recently he went to North Korea, and he testified before the 
Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee.
  It is a remarkable insight into the leadership that is needed in 
regard to the tense situation in Korea.
  Nowhere do we have as many troops facing each other as we do between 
North Korea and South Korea and that problem is compounded by the fact 
that there is no communication between the two countries.
  Mr President, I ask that Congressman Hall's remarks be printed in the 
Record.
  The remarks follow:

             Testimony of U.S. Representative Tony P. Hall

       Good morning. I want to thank you for inviting me to 
     testify today, Mr. Chairman, and to thank both you and 
     Senator Robb for the focus you are bringing to the United 
     States' relationship with North Korea.
       I am convinced that our increasing contacts with North 
     Korea can only benefit America's interests--and make the job 
     of the 37,000 American troops stationed along the border with 
     South Korea easier. And I am hopeful that our contacts also 
     will help the people of North Korea who have suffered in 
     their decades-long isolation, and are hurting badly today.
       Our humanitarian work, our progress in dismantling North 
     Korea's nuclear reactor and on missile technology controls, 
     and the unprecedented joint investigation by U.S. and North 
     Korean soldiers into the fate of missing servicemen--all of 
     these mark a dramatic turn-around in a relationship that is 
     in its fifth decade of military tension.
       I believe our nation owes special thanks for these changes 
     to former President Jimmy Carter, whose personal diplomacy 
     laid the groundwork for peace two years ago. Senator Paul 
     Simon, who with Senator Frank Murkowski travelled to North 
     Korea at a crucial moment, and who has championed ideas that 
     hold great promise for the future of both countries, also 
     deserves recognition for his work. We ought to build on their 
     success in seizing this historic opportunity.


                      north korea's food shortage

       The hunger and malnutrition that I saw in North Korea is 
     different than famines I've seen in my visits to other 
     countries. This is the only country I can remember where 
     grown children are shorter than their parents. The stunting 
     is severe, especially when you compare North Koreans to their 
     siblings and cousins in South Korea. And North Korea is the 
     only place I've seen where parents and grandparents are 
     giving their rations to their children in a desperate effort 
     to protect them.
       Today in North Korea, people are somehow surviving on 
     rations of little more than 600 calories a day--just seven 
     ounces of grain. That's not two bowls of rice, too much to 
     die on, but not enough to live on and function. They are 
     scrambling to supplement that starvation diet, but clearly 
     having little success.
       Nutritional standards say sedentary workers need about 
     2,000 calories a day to maintain their body weight--but 
     people in North Korea cannot be sedentary. In two weeks, the 
     harvest will be brought in with the aid of few animals and 
     fewer machines. And if there is to be any hope for next 
     year's harvest, the back-breaking work of rebuilding broken 
     irrigation systems, roads, and other infrastructure must be 
     completed.
       Adults have lost an average of 30 pounds since January, 
     according to Western aid workers I talked to there. According 
     to our Ambassador to South Korea, James Laney, a North Korean 
     soldier who defected to South Korea in mid-August weighed 
     just 92 pounds. And there are many more measures of the 
     extent of the suffering in North Korea in both the 
     intelligence and in the unclassified reports of U.N. 
     agencies, the International Red Cross, and charities that 
     have visited North Korea.
       For me, two things stand out in all of these measurements:
       First, the bodies of most of the North Koreans that I saw 
     are exhausted. Simply surviving this winter will be a 
     tremendous physical challenge that many of them will not be 
     able to meet.
       Second, North Korea's land appears equally worn out. Food 
     grows on any patch of land available--atop the rice paddy 
     walls, along the shoulders of roads, in rivers' floodplains, 
     on the slopes of steep hills. Land is not permitted to lie 
     fallow, there is no investment in fertilizer and pesticides, 
     deforestation leads to soil erosion that ruins once-
     productive land--and sorry yields are the result of it all.
       North Korea's granaries were last full in 1992--but however 
     self-inflicted the long-term problems may be, the country was 
     overwhelmed by the worst natural disaster in its history last 
     year. And this year, another severe flood struck the 
     breadbasket provinces that produce 60 percent of North 
     Korea's grain.


                            what is missing

       What struck me most was not what I saw--but what was 
     missing. There is an eerie silence in the capital, and in the 
     villages that we visited in more than 20 hours on the road. 
     You don't hear roosters crowing, and the air seems empty of 
     birds--even of gulls in the seaside city of Haeju. You don't 
     see cats, or rats, or cows or goats--or much sign of other 
     animal life. Occasionally, in people's homes I saw dogs, but 
     not a single puppy. According to some aid workers, the sight 
     of a pregnant woman is increasingly rare, and a new maternity 
     hospital never has more than 25 of its 250 beds filled. 
     Certainly we saw no fat people--or anybody that bore much 
     resemblance to their healthier siblings and cousins in South 
     Korea.
       Soldiers--and we saw a lot of individual soldiers 
     throughout the capital and countryside--have the same hollow-
     cheeked look as civilians, and their uniforms hang very 
     loosely on them. That may be the best evidence that most of 
     North Korea's military isn't getting much more to eat than 
     the rest of the people.
       All of this added up to a nagging sense that we simply 
     cannot know what is happening in North Korea. Aid workers 
     speak in hushed tones when talk turns to what is happening in 
     the mountains that make up 80 percent of North Korea. They 
     can barely help the 1.5 million children and flood victims 
     covered by the U.N.'s appeal for humanitarian aid; the 
     remaining 20 million people are on their own.
       Two American demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt of the 
     American Enterprise Institute and Judith Banister, of the 
     U.S. Census Bureau, have done statistical analysis of North 
     Korea's population--and with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I 
     would like to submit a letter for the record that Mr. 
     Eberstadt is preparing. The gist of their finding is that 
     half a million people are ``missing.'' That is either (1) a 
     statistical blip; or (2) a sign of severe changes in the 
     birth and death rates. We cannot know which is true, but I 
     believe the possibility of something that would affect 
     500,000 people deserves our concern.


                       north korea's own efforts

       I also want to comment briefly on the efforts that North 
     Korea is making to ease suffering in its country. Its rations 
     system now feeds the majority of the population, and by all 
     accounts, it is meticulously fair. Ration cards measure out 
     to three decimal points. A U.N. report issued Sept. 9 notes 
     that sometimes there is not enough food to distribute the 
     second of two monthly rations, but people do seem to share 
     equally in the food available.
       The system also appears to be exceptionally efficient. The 
     first U.S. flag ship to visit

[[Page S11193]]

     North Korea since the war arrived on Wednesday, Aug. 21--and 
     the rice and cornmeal it carried already was being 
     distributed when I visited two rural provinces on Thursday, 
     Aug. 22.
       Other North Korean efforts are more troubling, however. 
     According to Monday's report, some 30 to 90 percent of the 
     nation's livestock have been turned over to individuals for 
     tending or slaughtering; and local provinces have gotten a 
     green-light to barter their timber and other resources for 
     food (primarily with China)--increasing deforestation and 
     reducing the fuel available this winter.


                          the july 1996 flood

       So far, North Korea's suffering is largely caused by the 
     1995 disaster--a massive, 100-year flood that bore striking 
     similarities to our own Midwest flood of just three years 
     ago. People already bombarded with admonitions to ``work 
     harder, eat less'' have high hopes that the 1996 harvest will 
     be good.
       It won't be.
       United Nations experts who travelled to the region I saw 
     just after I left reported this week that much of the 
     country's breadbasket region--which produces 60 percent of 
     its grain, and which I visited last month--was under water 
     for five days in July. Rainfall was 3-5 times normal, 
     overwhelming irrigation canals and bursting dams. To put the 
     torrential rains into some perspective, it was twice what 
     North Carolina and Virginia endured in Hurricane Fran's 
     aftermath--and it lasted five times longer. And the rains 
     came at a crucial time in crop development--stunting the 
     growth of corn, and robbing rice stalks of their nutritional 
     kernels.
       Along just one 500-mile irrigation network, there were 369 
     breaks. A report issued by the International Red Cross, 
     UNICEF, and several U.N. agencies puts the likely crop losses 
     in the half-million acres irrigated by this system at $300 
     million. And broken sea dykes added to this misery, washing 
     salt water over land and poisoning it for this year and 
     probably several more.


                           international aid

       The international community is lending a hand--but only 
     barely. China, Japan and the U.S. each have donated some $6 
     million to the current appeal. South Korea has given $3 
     million, and promises far more if North Korea agrees to peace 
     talks that President Clinton and President Kim proposed in 
     April.
       With the notable exception of Sweden, though, the response 
     of most European nations has been nothing less than a ``let 
     'em starve'' pittance that shames the reputation of European 
     people. I spoke with the director of U.S. AID, Brian Atwood, 
     about this--and he plans to raise the matter with his 
     European Community counterpart in October.
       In all, just over half of the United Nations' current 
     emergency appeal has been filled. It last until March 1997, 
     but the food-for-work projects to rebuild irrigation systems 
     and other infrastructure must begin immediately after the 
     harvest in order to stave off another disaster in 1997.
       NGOs are doing their best to respond, but they are hampered 
     by restrictions on South Korean individuals--many who have 
     family ties to the North--and by North Korea's petulant 
     insistence that NGOs bring food, and not just people. Without 
     eyewitness accounts, without reporting by independent 
     journalists, NGOs simply cannot raise the money they need to 
     fund their operations. U.S. organizations like World Vision 
     and Mercy Corps are doing their best to help, and the U.S. 
     government should lend its weight to their efforts.
       In every disaster, NGOs are the first to respond--the 
     people who work with the most vulnerable groups, and who 
     stick around long enough to do the long-term work needed. 
     Governments--including the U.S. Government--need to do more. 
     But it will be the work of private citizens, and the 
     organizations they support, that will make or break North 
     Korea's recovery. This is my strong conviction, and I raised 
     it with both North and South Korean leaders.


                               conclusion

       Despite the seemingly endless stream of bad news about 
     North Korea, I remain hopeful. My talks with North Korea's 
     leaders were productive, and I am convinced that good-faith 
     efforts by the U.S. and other nations will produce more good-
     faith efforts by North Korea. It is not a quick process, but 
     it is one whose pace is increasing, and it is our best hope 
     for lending momentum to the progressive factions inside North 
     Korea.
       I am hopeful for one other reason: a UNICEF project that 
     represents an historic joint effort by North and South Korea. 
     Like all UNICEF projects, the Oral Rehydration Salts plant 
     will be a Godsend to children. The packets of gluocse and 
     salt that this plant will manufacture are used around the 
     world as a circuit-breaker in the spiral of disease and 
     death. If you care about suffering children, and had just 
     three wishes, Oral Rehydration Salts would be one of those 
     wishes.
       North Korea was self-sufficient in producing this life-
     saving product--until the flood swept away its building and 
     equipment in 1995. It has since donated a building for the 
     plant to UNICEF and brought it up to World Health 
     Organization standards--but UNICEF still lacked the money 
     needed to equip the plant.
       Until this week.
       When I met South Korea's Foreign Minister, Gong Ro Myung en 
     route home, I raised this urgent need with him. At the time, 
     my hopes that South Korea would help were pretty low. But 
     despite the loss of seats in Parliament that ensued after 
     South Korea's donation of humanitarian aid ended in insults 
     by North Korea; and despite public outrage recently 
     reinvigorated by violent clashes between students and police, 
     Minister Gong carried my request to President Kim Young Sam. 
     And despite President Kim's difficult position as the 
     country's first democratically elected leader--he pledged the 
     money needed to finish this project.
       His is an example that should inspire political leaders 
     here, and in other capitals. I hope it will mark a 
     determination by charities and private individuals to 
     overcome the challenges of helping people in North Koreaa as 
     well.


                           missing servicemen

       Finally, I cannot close without expressing my serious 
     concern about the persistent trickle of rumors that missing 
     American servicemen have been sighted in North Korea. I 
     personally raised questions about a pilot shot down during 
     the Korean War, and conveyed the resolve of Americans to help 
     the families of missing servicemen learn the answers to their 
     question.
       I know that this Committee's Chairman, along with Senators 
     John Kerry, Nancy Kassebaum, Hank Brown, and Chuck Robb have 
     devoted considerable attention to these questions, as has 
     Senator John McCain. Several of my House colleagues also have 
     worked hard on these issues--especially Congressmen Bill 
     Richardson, Pete Peterson and Lane Evans. I am convinced that 
     this persistent attention, and the ability of Americans in 
     military service today to work on the ground in North Korea, 
     offer the best hope possible.
       Four decades of isolation have not produced answers about 
     servicemen missing since the Korean War. I believe it is time 
     to try a new strategy; and I hope that North Korea's new 
     openness is the silver lining in the black cloud of the 
     terrible suffering the North Korean people are enduring.
       Again, thank you for holding this hearing, and for inviting 
     me to testify.

                          ____________________