Food aid has constituted the dominant share of total assistance to North Korea from the onset of the relief effort and continues to dominate assistance to this day (see appendix 2, tables 1–3). Aid has passed through a variety of differ- ent channels, including multilateral institutions, bilateral aid agencies, and a diverse, active, and highly innovative NGO community.1 The multiplicity of channels makes it difficult to track external assistance with complete confi- dence; in appendix 2, we provide a more detailed breakdown of total assistance by sector and agency. But this accounting exercise shows clearly the prominent role played by food aid.
From the opening of the country in 1995 through 2005, the world commu- nity poured over $2.3 billion of assistance into North Korea. Of that sum, 67 percent has taken the form of food aid, and another 9 percent has addressed food security or agricultural rehabilitation and development (appendix 2, tables 1 and 3).2 Figure 4.1 looks at this wide-ranging international effort in the context of domestic production and two of the demand estimates that we constructed in chapter 2; Chinese food trade is included in these estimates, which are mea- sured in millions of metric tons of basic grain equivalents. Several points are striking, the first of which is the continuing precariousness of North Korea’s overall food supply. A second striking fact is the extent of aid dependence. The sluggish recovery of production since the collapse of the great famine and the government’s continuing unwillingness to use foreign exchange for commercial imports have implied a steadily increasing reliance on humanitarian assistance.
The third point, however, is the declining willingness of the international com- munity to continue to support North Korea. Even before the onset of the most recent nuclear crisis in the fall of 2002, total aid had begun to decline, reflecting a combination of severe pressures on the humanitarian system from other crises as well as donor fatigue with North Korea’s uncooperative stance. WFP situation reports have always reflected concern about the timely flow of aid, even in years when international commitments appeared strong. In February 2002, however, the WFP experienced the first major break in the aid pipeline. WFP warnings became increasingly desperate in tone, and the organization was repeatedly forced to adjust food deliveries to targeted populations. In 2005 the position of the WFP became more precarious still as North Korea argued that it no longer needed international assistance and took steps to reduce its presence dramatically; we return to this episode in more detail in the conclusion to this chapter.
In any aid effort, coordination poses serious challenges to both donors and recipients. In 1991, following a problematic response to the plight of Iraqi Kurd-
82 DILEMMAS OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
FIGURE 4.1. Sources of Food Supply, 1990–2004
Note: Figures are for November of year indicated to October of following year. Source: USDAFAS;
PSD database, WFPINTERAIS 2004, 2005b, Noland 2000.
ish refugees, the United Nations General Assembly created the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), led by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The consolidated appeal rests on a planning cycle that includes consultations with the aid-receiving governments; independent assessments of needs; the formulation of an appeal; the tracking of international, bilateral, and NGO contributions; and the monitoring and assessment of subse- quent aid delivery. The CAP was also designed to solve the coordination problems that can arise among the multilateral institutions and donor governments. As we will show, North Korea posed severe and ongoing challenges to this mandate.
The World Food Programme is the multilateral organization with primary responsibility for humanitarian food assistance.3 Quite early, it was clear that the WFP would play a major role in the international community’s response to North Korea’s distress (appendix 2, table 2). Since 1995, $1.5 billion of aid has flowed through the consolidated appeals process; of that, the WFP is respon- sible for $1.3 billion, corresponding to roughly four million tons of food.
The dominance of food aid partly reflected the demands of the situation.
The emphasis on food aid, however, has also reflected a reticence on the part of donors to lend to North Korea or extend any assistance that could be inter- preted as balance-of-payments support. Table 4.1 tracks the appeal cycles from
TABLE 4.1. Results of UN Consolidated Appeals Process ($US millions)
* Reported achievement rate reflects amount received during the appeal relative to the target and excludes $99.3 million carried over.
** Percentage only takes into consideration WFP contributions from 1995–2004
Notes: n.a. = not available. No consolidated appeal in 2005. Thus, for 2005, WFP data is not via consolidated appeals but its own appeal.
Sources: UN-OCHA n.d.a.; FAO/WFP 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1999a, 1999b, 2003, 2004; WFP 2006b.
84 DILEMMAS OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
1995 through 2005, showing the role of the WFP in the consolidated appeal.
The WFP share dominates in every cycle, accounting for between 48.5 percent of the appeal (1999) to just over 90 percent (1998). If we look at actual contri- butions, however, we see that the WFP always had greater success in securing support than did the other agencies included in the consolidated appeal. From 1998 through 2002, WFP requests constituted 76 percent of the appeal but nearly 95 percent of actual contributions. This changed beginning in 2003, but in the context of declining overall assistance and the faltering ability of both the consolidated appeal and the WFP to meet targets.
The reluctance of the donors to provide other forms of assistance can be seen most clearly in the fate of the Agricultural Recovery and Environmental Pro- tection Plan (AREP) in North Korea (Kim 2001). At the behest of the North Korean government, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) convened a thematic roundtable in 1998, the first international conference designed—at least from the perspective of the donors—to get at the root causes of North Korea’s food and agricultural problems. The UNDP had been a party to the consolidated appeal from the outset, although by its own admission had met only limited success in securing support before the roundtable.
At the roundtable meeting—three years after the floods of 1995—the North Korean government continued to interpret the country’s problems in terms of natural disasters and declining external trade rather than institutional and pol- icy constraints. North Korean officials clearly viewed the roundtable process as a way to secure external support for rehabilitation projects, including not only rural infrastructure but also the modernization of plants producing fertilizer and farm equipment. The government initially sought $340 million through the roundtable process. Through April 2000, $128.4 million had been extended in support of the program. About $40 million of this came in the form of grants and loans from OPEC and the International Fund for Agricultural Develop- ment, approximately another third from the EU, and the remainder from bilat- eral donors—the Republic of Korea, China, Switzerland—and NGOs.
But contributions came overwhelmingly in the form of material supports, mainly fertilizer and commodity support for food-for-work programs. For example, large fertilizer contributions by the South Korean government were counted in AREP totals. No support was granted for the modernization and operation of fertilizer and agricultural machinery plants or for the foreign exchange costs of rural infrastructure rehabilitation (though private crop insur- ance payouts were available for this purpose). From 1996 through 2004, the UNDP and FAO together accounted for only $20 million of total consolidated appeal commitments, or just over 1 percent of total aid.
The Aid Regime 85
Although the bulk of total humanitarian assistance was provided through a multilateral process, a substantial amount of aid still flowed outside of the con- solidated appeal (table 4.2). Of $2.4 billion of total assistance (again excluding Chinese support), approximately 62 percent went through multilateral institu- tions, and another 26 percent through bilateral channels; European countries accounted for some of the bilateral aid, but South Korea and China accounted for the majority of it. The NGO community has accounted for the remaining 12 percent of total aid, although that share rose somewhat as government com- mitment began to flag in the early 2000s.
This share almost certainly undervalues the social contribution of private assistance. Dedication among the NGO community is extraordinarily high.
Small projects are closely monitored, based on the development of trust at the local level and no doubt relatively efficient as a result. Wages paid to NGO workers are also low compared to those of international civil servants. Nonethe- less, it is clear that public aid dominates the total, and even these figures may overestimate the private share as measured in purely financial terms.