Tyrants avoid the truth in famine-hit North Korea

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): A photo of a child with matchstick legs, a distended belly and hair turned orange should accompany this article.

No, not a picture from the unending human misery in Africa as Hutu/Tutsi ethnic rivalry cuts a swathe through Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire -- though in that case, at least, the photos of human suffering are available for all to see.

The picture that should accompany this article is not available because press photographers cannot accompany the officials who have seen children with swollen bellies and orange hair in the Asian nation whose dictatorship once proudly proclaimed to the world that it had created "paradise" here on earth.

On the ever-volatile Korean peninsula a great many-sided drama is currently unfolding. One major strand in that drama is the imminent specter of famine in North Korea.

Neither North Korea itself nor the outside world are reacting to that famine-threat as perhaps they should do. For example, North Korea could ostentatiously withdraw a few divisions of its million-plus army, poised for action close to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which divides the two Koreas, thereby radically reducing the bellicose image which it customarily presents to the world.

The North Korean military, even amid today's dire straits, would probably never countenance such a move. But were North Korea to make such a gesture, it would immediately remove one major barrier to the provision of foreign food aid to a nation obviously in distress.

The other necessary North Korean move is even less likely to be made. That would be finally to abandon its status as Asia's sole remaining hermit nation, and to allow free reporting and free photography of its distress. Were that to happen, it is quite likely that Asia's -- and the world's -- conscience would be aroused and the worst aspects of famine could be averted.

That too is not going to happen. North Korea's leaders are unlikely to accept, at this late stage, that there is a critical linkage between free movement, the free flow of information, and beneficial action.

Rather, they will be too concerned lest opening the gates so exposes their whole crumbling edifice as to hasten its ultimate collapse. For a start, a freer flow of information would soon reveal that the floods of 1995 and 1996 were not the sole cause of the food shortage, as North Korea claims, and as much of the world's media politely echoes.

Already some international aid officials have concluded that other factors, such as avoidable denudation, and past agricultural policies of the North Korean dictatorship, are as much to blame as the floods. One such official, interviewed last week, suggested that the floods were probably only responsible for around a quarter of the current rice shortfall in North Korea, the total of which the official put at 1.4 million tons.

The dictatorship almost certainly cannot survive the surfacing of statistics like that. The self-proclaimed myth of paradise achieved would be blown apart.

So far, few if any foreign aid officials have been allowed into the worst-hit northern areas, which will soon be in the firm grip of famine, if they are not already. In those northern provinces of North Korea, officials admit to foreign aid workers that people are supplementing their meager 100 grams per day rice ration by scraping off the bark on trees -- with consequent intestinal damage to themselves. The UN World Food Program is doubling its request for donations of food aid in order that it can at least try to feed many of the badly malnourished children.

The North Korean regime is seeking to survive on others' ignorance of what is really going on, as tyrannies often do.

Were there to be a freer flow of information about North Korea's current tragic state it is interesting to ponder -- what would the reaction in South Korea be? So far, after an initial gift of 150,000 tons of rice two years ago, South Korea has been less than generous in its reaction. There are good reasons for this.

First, the North Koreans required that there should be no indication on the rice sacks from where it came. Then, a South Korean ship carrying the rice was required to fly the North Korean flag. One rice ship was briefly detained on spying charges. In the light of all this, the incentive to be generous was understandably reduced.

There are other more permanent disincentives for the South Koreans. There are those one million North Korean troops offensively poised on the other side of the DMZ, for a start. The undiminished hostile propaganda against the South is another. South Korea, along with the United States, rightly resists when North Korea sinks to the ultimate cynicism of using famine as a political ploy -- hinting that it will enter into Korean peace talks provided it gets a lot of food aid first.

So while some foreign observers tend to be critical of South Korea for allegedly using food aid as a diplomatic tool, there are in fact good reasons for the South's lack of generosity. There has been no outcry in the South about the government's lack of compassionate action towards the North. The famine conditions in the North have not received blanket coverage in the South Korean media, such as might arouse public opinion.

So it is interesting to speculate what might happen were there to be a freer flow of information from the North. Would press pictures of Korean children with distended stomachs and orange hair lead to a great wave of the fellow-feeling which is said to underpin the pan-Korean yearning for reunification?

Or would the South Koreans be more inclined to be on even greater guard against a Northern regime which perpetrates such horrors on its own people even as it threatens the South?

The absence of information also restrains a generous Japanese response to North Korea's plight. Recent reports of Japanese girls kidnapped and abducted from Japan itself to the North, to suit the regime's tyrannical purposes, have turned Tokyo thoughts away from altruism. North Korea has not sought to satisfactorily explain these incidents.

It is easy to be censorious about the lack of neighborly generosity for North Korea. But in more ways than one, North Korea has brought its plight upon itself.

Thousands more North Korean men, women and children will die of starvation in the coming months, as a result.