Introduction
Torrential flooding in North Korea in the summer of 1995 created a humanitarian crisis in North Korea. For the first time, North Korea was forced to open up for assistance from the outside world. The voluntary entry of international humanitarian aid workers into North Korea뾦n combination with the involuntary flow of desperately hungry North Koreans across the North Korean border with China뾪arked the beginning of the end of North Korea뭩 hermetic isolation and the dawn of a new challenge to the survival of North Korea뭩 political system.
Despite the good intentions with which aid workers came to North Korea and despite the North Korean government뭩 decision to allow them in, the presence of humanitarian aid workers in North Korea itself was treated as a new threat for an embattled regime that had long regarded direct contact with the outside as a mortal danger to its own ability to maintain political control and loyalty among the people.
For the North Korean leadership, humanitarian assistance and the physical presence of outsiders in Pyongyang and other parts of North Korea was intensely political. Likewise, the opportunity to enter North Korea, even for humanitarian reasons, was unavoidably viewed by governments in the United States and South Korea through a political lens, a perspective which further tied humanitarian efforts to political considerations.
This research effort attempts to independently examine the impact of NGO and UN humanitarian relief efforts in North Korea and to draw lessons from those experiences that might increase understanding of North Korea뭩 structure and system for managing NGO activities. On the basis of interviews with NGO and UN representatives and independent research focused on the U.S., European, and South Korean experiences, respectively, each of the chapter authors has described the context, experience, and activities of the respective NGO communities in dealing with North Korea and has analyzed and explained the peculiarities, process, and result of this interaction. The chapters identify the obstacles faced by humanitarian relief workers in North Korea and explore the impact of NGO efforts on North Korea, including whether there is evidence of change in North Korean policies as a result of UN and NGO efforts.
THE EXPERIENCE OF U.S. NGOS IN NORTH KOREA
L. Gordon Flake details the complex history of U.S. NGO involvement in North Korea, describing a highly politicized policy debate in which the U.S. government used food aid as leverage to induce the North Korean government to attend Four Party Talks, leaving U.S. NGOs with virtually no leverage to negotiate access arrangements or numbers of observers that would be necessary to monitor food assistance in North Korea. North Korea in turn politicized the work of the NGOs based both on its profound mistrust of NGO intentions and its failure to understand the role, function, and nature of the U.S. NGO community.
Although a small group of NGOs that joined together to work in North Korea was ultimately successful in lobbying the State Department to pay more attention to North Korean famine relief, the assistance came with so many political strings that the effort was unsustainable in North Korea. Flake notes that the most successful U.S. NGOs have been associated with U.S. religious groups such as the Latter-day Saints Ministries, Catholic and Southern Baptist-affiliated assistance organizations, or other church-based efforts, including the Korean American church community. Given the highly politicized nature of the debate over policy toward North Korea and the failed experience of the PVOC, which was forced to pull out for a variety of reasons, it seems unlikely that there will be renewed interest in NGO involvement in North Korea in the absence of progress in the political relationship.
THE SOUTH KOREAN NGOS: THE POLITICAL CONTEXT
Chung Oknim describes the political circumstances surrounding the activities and role of South Korean NGOs in the context of inter-Korean relations. She describes the great difficulties faced by South Korean NGOs that sought to provide humanitarian assistance to the North prior to the inauguration of ROK President Kim Dae Jung, at a time when the South Korean government was strongly discouraging private assistance to North Korea. With the advent of the Sunshine Policy, South Korean NGOs received much greater space, encouragement, and even government funding for their humanitarian activities with North Korea.
However, the inter-Korean summit and its aftermath have surprisingly dealt major challenges to South Korean NGOs in two respects. First, in the aftermath of the inter-Korean summit, the North Korean focus shifted to inter-Korean official relations, leaving little room for or attention to South Korean NGO activities. Second, the downturn in the South Korean public mood in the face of a lack of inter-Korean progress compared to the expectations that have been engendered has left the public apathetic about the North and has detracted from interest in South Korean NGO activities with North Korea. Chung conveys a more optimistic, idealistic, and patient view among South Korean NGOs regarding prospects for the future in inter-Korean relations뾞 view generally based on the presumption that South Korean NGO activities themselves are the key to building trust and reducing tension on the Korean Peninsula.
THE EUROPEAN NGO EXPERIENCE IN NORTH KOREA
Michael Schloms analyzes the European NGO experience in North Korea, including insights from the primarily European staffing of international organizations such as the UN agencies and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). He emphasizes the frustrations that Europeans faced due to lack of information, data, and cooperation necessary to undertake humanitarian action in the DPRK. In the face of these difficulties, Schloms outlines the factors that caused certain NGOs such as Medicins Sans Fronti?es, Action Contra la Faim, and Oxfam to withdraw rather than to work under unsatisfactory constraints that prevented them from providing direct humanitarian assistance.
Other European NGOs found that there was space for them to continue their work, especially in the field of agricultural rehabilitation, albeit even this work often revealed the government뭩 continuing misplaced priority on food self-sufficiency. European policy requires European NGOs to be resident in a country in order to qualify for funding from ECHO, so there are a wide array of resident European NGOs trying to carry out their work and pushing their North Korean counterparts hard for space to make the transition from humanitarian to development assistance. Schloms뭩 general prognosis for further progress is not encouraging, given the regime뭩 resistance to external influence and its attempts to isolate outside influences from the rest of the population.
Conclusions
The political constraints that North Korea has placed on the activities and scope of international humanitarian activities conducted by outside NGOs has resulted in a polarized response within the NGO community. While some NGOs and UN agencies have opted to quietly accept North Korean political constraints and meet basic needs of some portion of needy North Koreans while continuing to challenge and create space for more effective humanitarian operations from within, others have refused to accept the constraints imposed by the North Korean system and have opted to leave.
North Korean efforts to constrain NGO humanitarian efforts have been designed primarily as efforts to control information, individual movement within North Korea, and the means of production, each of which are deemed critical to maintenance of political control and regime survival. Despite North Korean efforts to control and limit the political impact of NGO and UN humanitarian aid efforts, th
