South Korea Offers Food Aid to North

[pampango]

Source: New York Times

South Korea on Monday offered to ship 10,000 tons of corn to North Korea in what would be the first government-funded humanitarian aid for the North in nearly two years.

The offer is far smaller than what South Korea used to ship almost annually to the North. When President Lee Myung-bak took office in early last year, he conditioned any large-scale aid shipments on progress made in talks about ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Typically, the South would ship as much as 500,000 tons of rice and 300,000 tons of chemical fertilizer to North Korea each year.

There was no immediate response from North Korea regarding the food offer. The North has faced chronic food shortages and depended on outside aid to help feed its 24 million people since bad weather and mismanagement destroyed its economy in the mid-1990s. It typically is short of 600,000 to 1 million tons of food a year.

Until Mr. Lee took office, South Korea had been one of the biggest donors to the North. But conservative South Koreans who helped elect him fear that large unconditional aid would only weaken the impact of United Nations sanctions placed on the North for testing a nuclear device and would embolden the recalcitrant North Korean regime in nuclear disarmament talks.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/asia/27korea.html

[izquierdista]

1. "Bad weather and mismanagement"

More of the latter than the former. This is a land where the national dish is pickled cabbage. Do you realize how bad a farmer you have to be to run out of cabbage? Brassica plants have saved many people from starvation over the years, like during the Irish potato famine, and they require next to no care. In many places, there are enough escapees from cultivation that have reverted to the wild type that they support large numbers of wildlife. I'm guessing that in North Korea, any mustard shoot that appears is quickly devoured by the starving people.

The sooner the country ceases the deification of their Great and Dear Leaders and gets back to the business of life -- farming -- the better off they will be.