[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 71 (Tuesday, June 4, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4961-S4962]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NORTH KOREA

 Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask that the following article 
by Robert Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, 
regarding the humanitarian crisis in North Korea be printed in the 
Record. This article should have been referenced in my floor statement 
of May 20, 2002, also on North Korea.
  The article follows:

                [From the New York Times, May 16, 2002]

                        Aid Meant for the Hungry

                           (By Roberta Cohen)

       Washington.--Hunger still threatens millions in North 
     Korea, and one symptom of the harsh conditions is the 
     desperation of North Korean refugees trying in the past few 
     days to elude Chinese police and seek asylum at American and 
     Japanese consulates in China. As the Bush administration 
     prepares to restart talks with North Korea, food, as well as 
     weapons and troops, should be on the agenda. Despite the 
     tense relationship between the two countries, the United 
     States is the leading donor of food to North Korea, which 
     cannot feed its 22 million people. American negotiators 
     should insist on assurances that this aid is reaching those 
     most in need.
       Since 1995, the United States has provided more than $500 
     million in food and other commodities to North Korea--up to 
     350,000 metric tons of food each year. This year this aid is 
     down to 155,000 metric tons because of demands for aid in 
     Afghanistan; other countries are also sending less to North 
     Korea. But American deliveries of food and fuel remain 
     critical to Pyongyang. Sending food aid has helped the United 
     States persuade the North Koreans to engage in talks on 
     military-strategic issues. The aid also shores up the 
     Pyongyang regime, which Washington would rather see improve 
     than collapse, since sudden disintegration could overwhelm 
     South Korea with refugees and create political and economic 
     turmoil. But there is also an overriding humanitarian 
     imperative. More than 2 million North Koreans are reported to 
     have died from starvation and related diseases between 1994 
     and 1998, and large pockets of hunger and starvation remain. 
     At least 40 percent of children under 5 are malnourished, 
     according to the World Food Program, a United Nations agency.
       No one really knows, however, how much donated food is 
     diverted to the North Korean military, police, Communist 
     Party officials, essential workers and those loyal to the 
     regime. The World Food Program argues that food aid is not 
     going to the military because the military has the first cut 
     from national harvests. But the agency has no evidence 
     because there is no independent monitoring of donated food. 
     As the main conduit of American aid, the World Food Program 
     has managed to increase the number of North Korean counties 
     it can visit to 163, but its staff is

[[Page S4962]]

     barred from more than 40, and its visits everywhere are 
     supervised. It cannot make random spot checks or bring its 
     own Korean-language interpreters or visit farmers' markets 
     where it could find out whether its food aid is being sold on 
     the black market. At a Congressional hearing this month, the 
     World Food Program claimed to have a ``reasonable degree of 
     assurance'' that the food was getting to those who need it. 
     But others at the hearing strongly disagreed. ``Anyone who 
     has sat and talked to the North Korean refugees would find it 
     really difficult to believe the assurances of the W.F.P.,'' 
     Sophie Delaunay, North Korean project representative for 
     Doctors Without Borders, told Congress. In interviews by 
     humanitarian groups and journalists in the past few years, 
     refugees among the 100,000 to 200,000 who fled to China in 
     search of food have said that they never got any donated 
     food in North Korea and that the regime has denied food 
     aid to those whose loyalty it questions.
       It is time for the United States to set some standards. 
     America must not be complicit in food distribution that 
     favors some and discriminates against others. In the coming 
     negotiations, the United States should insist upon 
     unrestricted access to all areas of the country where food is 
     delivered. It should require lists of the actual institutions 
     to which food and medicines are going and uncontrolled access 
     for the World Food Program. It should press the North Korean 
     government to allow international aid groups to set up 
     feeding stations of their own that are accessible to all 
     hungry North Koreans. The precarious situation of the North 
     Koreans who have crossed into China should also be on the 
     table. These desperate people foraging for food are treated 
     as illegal immigrants and hunted down. When forcibly returned 
     to North Korea, they may face imprisonment.
       North Korea wants economic aid and investment, and it 
     desperately needs machinery, fertilizer and technical 
     assistance to improve its agriculture and reform its 
     inefficient collective farms. Equitable distribution of food 
     aid should be a prime condition for such assistance.

                          ____________________