United Nations – U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Friday that North Korea is not ready to feed its people on its own, and he is trying to persuade Pyongyang to continue food aid to the country’s children.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-Hon on Thursday asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to halt the food program, which has fed as much as a third of the nation’s population annually, by December.
“Our government is prepared to provide food to all our people,” Choe said Thursday, adding that North Korea remained interested in development aid.
Choe said his nation did not want to become too reliant on outside aid and that relief had become too politicized, particularly with the United States “linking it to human-rights issues,” he said.
The isolated nation has a policy of ju che, or self-reliance, but faced severe famines over the past decade that killed an estimated 2 million people.
Though North Korea is better able to feed more of its population and expects a good winter harvest, about 7 percent of its 22.5 million people are still starving and 37 percent remain chronically malnourished, Egeland said.
“Our assessment is that they will not be able to have enough food,” he said. “We are very concerned because we think this is too soon and too abrupt.”
The U.N. World Food Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, along with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent and 11 other aid groups, are providing food, medical and emergency aid to North Korea.
South Korea has pledged new food aid that could help fill the gap if the United Nations must pull out, but Egeland said it will not be enough.
Because North Korea will still accept development assistance, U.N. officials are negotiating artful ways to continue feeding the hungry under a different guise.
Meals for schoolchildren could be reclassified as an educational program, Egeland said, adding that the World Food Program already pays some workers with food.
Development aid, he noted, typically aims to build infrastructure, bolster agriculture and promote self-sufficiency.
But some international donors worry that giving development aid makes them appear to endorse Pyongyang’s harsh communist regime.
