North Koreans Still Need Food Aid, U.N. Says

North Korea’s nascent economic reforms are real but not far enough along to be irreversible, an official with the United Nations World Food Program told reporters here Monday. It could be years before the economy develops to the point where the North can adequately feed its people, he added, calling on donors to increase aid.

“A food crisis is on us at the wrong time,” said Masood Hyder, the WFP representative in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Hyder said on-again, off-again donations and the long lead time needed for aid shipments could cause lapses in basic nutritional assistance for millions of people until late March.

“Sending food is not like sending a chair or a money transfer,” he added.

One country that could fill the gap relatively quickly is China, a longtime North Korean ally and the host of a scheduled second round of talks this month aimed at curtailing the North’s nuclear weapons program.

China would step in if convinced there was a need, said Li Dunqiu, secretary-general of the Chinese Society for the Study of Korean History. However, Beijing’s aid to North Korea has been declining over the last few years, he said.

The timing of the aid shortfall is particularly bad given that it threatens to reverse recent health and nutritional improvements, Hyder said. It also comes as the North Korean government experiments with a marginally more open economy.

One of the most fundamental changes on that front is the growing acceptance in North Korea that conditions can be improved, Hyder said.

“How could you change an already perfect system?” he said, paraphrasing a view prevalent in North Korea for decades. “From that to acceptance of change in ideological terms is quite a major step forward.”

Despite some encouraging early signs, however, the regime of Kim Jong Il is not convinced that economic freedom should be a lasting strategy, said Jin Linbo, Asia-Pacific studies director with the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.

“The North Korean leader is not ready to make the final decision yet on whether to follow the steps of China in opening up,” not having shaken off his suspicion that greater contact with the outside world will undermine the regime’s power, Jin said.

Kim also is looking closely at Vietnam, Jin added, which is closer in size to North Korea and remains more closed than China.

Hyder, who characterizes North Korea’s initial reforms as substantial but fragile, said the regime’s official blessing of private markets is only one of several signs of real change.

Pyongyang’s showcase market is housed in a large hall with stalls divided into three sections, he said: clothing and domestic goods, vegetables, and meat and grains. Each stallholder wears a badge, he added, presumably detailing his or her registration information, with prices posted on each product.

The price of rice in the market a couple of weeks ago was three times the official price, he added.

On other fronts, Pyongyang now has a mobile-phone network, a billboard, secondhand Japanese cars and restaurants. Wages and prices are allowed to fluctuate a bit and subsidies are being reduced, Hyder said.

U.N. staff members are also afforded greater access to North Korean agencies, although still at a limited level, he said, amid modest signs that the leadership is soliciting advice from nongovernmental organizations and other outsiders on policy.

“But it’s still the early days,” he said.