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Sanctions no bar to North Korea's private aid flows http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=SEO22234
Tue 14 Nov 2006
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL, Nov 14 (Reuters) - North Korea may be facing U.N. sanctions for the nuclear test it conducted last month, but goats and milk cows are still coming across the border.
Private aid from South Korean groups in the form of medicine, food and livestock has increased steadily in recent years, with donors seeing it as a way of providing help directly to people of the impoverished state.
Critics say it is difficult to be sure that such aid does not become a cash cow for the North's powerful military, but donors are determined.
"The contributions from South Korean civic and religious groups are not that big, but they are very practical," said Lee Keum-soon, a senior research fellow for South's Korea Institute for National Unification. "Many South Koreans see it as their responsibility to keep North Koreans alive."
Groups outside South Korea also supply private aid.
Civic and religious group leaders say many South Koreans are angry with the leaders of the communist North for the nuclear test and July's missile launches, but their sense of fraternity with its citizens is undiminished.
In 1999, nine civic groups from the South gave aid to North Korea valued at $250,000. By 2005, the number of groups had risen to 54, giving total aid of $76.7 million. In 2006, at least 66 organisations will give aid, the Unification Ministry said.
The groups include the One Korea Buddhist Movement, which is helping set up a noodle factory in the North, the Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, which provides dairy cows, and Green Doctors, which sends medical supplies.
"After the U.N. sanctions, some civic organisations have said it's a bit more difficult to collect money from people. However, their support for the North is on an ever-increasing path," said a Unification Ministry official.
Pyongyang, which routinely extols the idea of one Korean nation supporting itself, usually allows South Korean civic aid donors access to the secretive state.
"We have no problem in monitoring our aid," said Kang Young-sik, the director of the Korean Sharing Movement, which builds hospitals and helps North Korea's farms.
The South Korean government, which has typically provided 500,000 tonnes of rice to North Korea a year, has been criticised for not having enough monitoring checks in place to make sure its aid does not get diverted.
But the U.N. World Food Programme, which does have an extensive monitoring system, has difficulty finding donors.
North Korea has been roundly criticised for spending massive amounts on its nuclear and weapons programmes instead of fixing its chronic food shortages. Up to 2.5 million people, or 10 percent of its population, perished from famine in the 1990s, the World Food Programme has quoted studies as saying.
When South Korea suspended its regular rice aid after the missile tests, civic groups in the country kept the food flowing.
"If we do not send aid once a month, children are going to go hungry," said Yoon Hwan-cheol, an official with Sharing Campaign, one of the biggest donors of private aid to the North. (With additional reporting by Jang Sera)
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