Word: pyongyang
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...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...
...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...
...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 had been a key component of its aid to Pyongyang). Among the steps Pyongyang urgently needs to take now, Noland and others believe, are to conclude negotiations for expanded aid from the World Food Program. (Pyongyang sharply curtailed the activities of the organization following a rare bumper crop in the North three years ago.) Kim also has to swallow his pride...
Seoh Jae-jean, Director for NK Studies Division at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification, also believes that Pyongyang's recent "crackdown on black markets" has exacerbated shortages. "If they leave people alone, people will find ways to survive with agility and flexibility. The government's attempt to control the private market is making matters worse," he says. But leaving people in his own country alone has never been Kim Jong Il's strong suit. Letting them suffer and, in the past, starve to death, has been his inclination. Will 2008 be different? With Stephen Kim/Seoul