Informed Speculation

Thanks to long-time reader Fred for pointing out this article in the International Herald Tribune on recent moves by Pyongyang to curtail aid programs that merely feed their starving masses, rather than the coffers of Kim Jong-Il:

Under orders from North Korea, by the end of this year the World Food Program of the United Nations, which provides 90 percent of the aid here, is to shift from direct food to development aid. In addition, new government policies dictate that all foreign personnel from the 12 private aid groups operating from Pyongyang, the capital, are to leave the country.

“There are a lot of indications that this is serious,” said Padraig O Ruairc, country director for Concern Worldwide, a private group based in Ireland that works on water, sanitation and midwife projects in North Korea. Aid groups, he said by telephone from Pyongyang, “are getting refusals for their field visits.”

North Korean officials say they want private aid projects to continue, but they want resident foreigners to leave, returning occasionally to monitor the work. Under those conditions, Ruairc and Jerome Bossuet, country director for Triangle Génération Humanitaire, a French group, predicted that most aid groups would wind up their projects and leave.

Oversight by resident foreigners is essential for aid programs to continue, said David Hill, North Korea representative for the European Commission Humanitarian Office. Speaking from Pyongyang, he estimated that his $21 million annual budget provided most of the funds for nine of the private groups here.

“Our prime requirement is that our partners are present on the ground, permanently,” Hill said. Noting that talks are under way with North Korean officials to save the aid programs, he added, “Brussels is not going to shift on permanent residency.”

…[The U.N.] estimates that 7 percent of North Koreans are starving, and 37 percent are chronically malnourished. According to UN statistics, 40 percent of the children suffer from stunted growth, and 20 percent are underweight. The average 7-year-old boy is 18 centimeters, or seven inches, shorter and nine kilograms, or 20 pounds, lighter than his South Korean counterpart.

Kim Jong-Il had better hope there is no afterlife, because there are millions of corpses on his head. To quote Bono:

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die…