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...Bush Administration dangled the assistance last month as a carrot in front of Kim: if North Korea delivered a "satisfactory" declaration on its entire nuclear weapons program, as it agreed to do in the so-called six-party talks, the extra food aid from the U.S. would kick in. In the eyes of some current and former diplomats, the North never has come clean about all aspects of its nuclear program, but the urgency of the food situation has now apparently made that a secondary concern. "No one wants a rerun of the 1990s or anything close to that," says...
...precarious than at any time since the '90s," says Noland. Political tension, particularly between the North and new South Korean government of Lee Myung Bak, is also playing a role. Lee, a month after his inauguration earlier this year, decided he would continue Seoul's humanitarian assistance of food aid and fertilizer regardless of progress in the nuclear talks - but only if the North requested it. He has made all other economic dealings with Pyongyang contingent on the North's good nuclear behavior, and that has infuriated...
...China grew, Beijing implemented a series of measures to reduce its grain exports. Among other things, it eliminated a 13% tax rebate on grain exports. Since a substantial portion of Chinese-grown rice and grains go to the North on commercial terms - Beijing's overall agricultural trade and aid to Pyongyang is an official state secret, so no one knows precisely how much - those policy changes hurt overall food supply in the North, and also helped continue to drive up food prices in the country...
Diplomatic and NGO sources in Seoul now say that Beijing has begun to move to address the emerging North Korean shortages. In March and April it donated at least 50,000 metric tons of food aid to Pyongyang. With the Olympics in August and a crackdown on North Korean refugees sneaking into China already well under way, Beijing wants nothing to do with the exodus from the North a growing food crisis would inevitably spur...
...might it get in North Korea? Most aid workers in Seoul believe that the current shortages won't equal the famine of the 1990s, in part because this time the outside world has been alerted to the deteriorating conditions sooner than it was a decade ago. But, as Noland points out, North Korea not only needs immediate food assistance, it needs to import a significant amount of fertilizer or it risks another bad harvest this year, further compounding the deepening food problem. (After the North's nuclear test in the fall of 2006, South Korea stopped supplying fertilizer, which...