N. Korea Seeks End to U.N. Aid

The U.N. World Food Program confirmed today that North Korea had asked it to cease much of its food assistance by the end of November.

“They are telling us that domestic food production is increasing, the humanitarian crisis is easing and that we need to end large-scale feeding,” said Gerald Bourke, a spokesman for the United Nations agency in Beijing.

The World Food Program, which is the principal conduit of U.S. food aid to North Korea, started its operations there in 1995 in the midst of a famine that killed an estimated 2 million people, about 10% of the population.

Critics of the North Korean government believe that the real motivation for ending U.N. food deliveries is to end international donors’ monitoring of where the aid goes.

Video footage shot secretly last year in the northeastern city of Chongjin showed sacks of rice with American flags and insignias of aid agencies being sold at a public market.

A recently released report by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimated that 10% to 30% of aid is diverted from the intended recipients.

Stephan Haggard, a professor at UC San Diego and one of the authors of the report, said in an interview last week that the North Koreans preferred aid from South Korea and China because they do not have to account so closely for it.

The North Koreans have been saying for more than a year that they would like to end international food donations, but this is the first time they have set a deadline, Bourke said.

“Two to three months is not a long deadline to pack up and go, so we are still under negotiations,” said Bourke. “We feel there are still substantial levels of malnutrition among young children, nursing mothers and other vulnerable groups and that there is still a need for our program.”

Bourke said the North Koreans do not want to end all of the agency’s operations, but would prefer development programs, aimed at boosting food production, over handouts, which Pyongyang fears could create dependency.

Under the development program, the agency runs 19 factories in North Korea that produce foods such as noodles and biscuits.

International donors, the United States in particular, have been reluctant to supply more developmental aid until the dispute over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is resolved.