Famine’s Far-Reaching Fallout : A developing crisis in North Korea could destabilize the region

Officials of the World Food Program, warning of imminent famine in North Korea, have renewed their pleas for international help. On-site observation by the U.N. agency indicates that up to half a million lives in the tightly closed Stalinist country could be at risk.

In August, after floods devastated farmland in the northwest, Pyongyang made an unprecedented appeal for help. It has gotten some aid, including $225,000 from the U.S. government, but nowhere near enough to make up for recent losses. The agency estimates that North Korea needs 1.5 million tons of grain before the next harvest.

Kim Jong Il’s regime largely has itself to blame for the apparent international indifference to the country’s plight. Pyongyang’s chronic mismanagement of food production and distribution has often produced regional shortages and actually led to a national campaign to limit meals to two a day.

The regime also has shown a fine talent for biting the hands that feed it. Earlier this year South Korea began shipping 150,000 tons of emergency rice relief to the north, in part to win the release of some captive South Korean fishermen. Pyongyang showed its gratitude by accusing the crew members of a cargo ship bringing in rice of being spies and putting them in prison, where they remain. Seoul of course stopped sending aid, as did Bangkok when North Korea failed to pay bills owed to Thailand.

Humanitarian impulses aside, the political temptation when confronted with a despotic regime in trouble is to let it suffer the consequences of its misrule. The problem is that those consequences, apart from possibly meaning the deaths of thousands of innocent people, could affect security across the Korean peninsula. There’s concern that shortages could lead to widespread food riots in North Korea. These might so threaten the regime that it would try to divert the population’s attention by provoking a new military confrontation with the south. A distant prospect, perhaps, but one worth taking into account along with the humanitarian needs of North Korea’s people.