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사회진보연대를 방문한 바 있는 Food First의 크리스틴 안이 Znet에 올렸네요. 내용은 미국이 최근 통과시킨 '북한자유법'에 대한 비판과 경제제재 해제의 필요성에 대한 것이네요. 글에서 보면 최근 북한도 방문했나 봅니다. 참고로 이 분은 가수 조용필 처제랍니다. 조용필씨 부인은 저번에 돌아가셨지요. Food First라는 단체는 브라질의 MST('땅없는 농업노동자들') 등 소농운동단체와 연대를 많이 하는 단체로 알고 있고, 아룬다티 미탈과 피터 로셋(?)이라는 주요 신자유주의 세계화 반대 활동가가 있습니다. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Food The Root of North Korea's Human Rights Crisis ......... by Christine Ahn August 04, 2004 "It was worse than war," described a North Korean documentary filmmaker who traveled up and down the country documenting the 1990s famine in North Korea that displaced over 5 million people and ravaged 5 percent of the population. To the relief of the North Koreans, the famine appears to have finally passed. Even the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that last year was the best harvest North Korea had in nine years. Despite the positive signs, North Korea still needs 944,000 tons of food to help feed the 6.5 million North Koreans who will go hungry this year. After imposing over 50 years of sanctions and threatening North Korea with nuclear annihilation, Washington has a new idea for what they believe North Koreans need. The House of Representatives unanimously passed the North Korea Human Rights Act (NKHRA) on July 22, 2004 to "improve" the human rights conditions of North Koreans. The bill, introduced by Jim Leach (R-Iowa) and backed by a coalition of right-wing evangelical Christian groups and pro-war thinktanks, believes the collapse of the regime will usher in freedom for North Koreans. The Senate version, the North Korea Freedom Act (NKFA), has been said to read like a manual to topple the North Korean regime. This bill earmarks $24 million dollars in taxpayer funds to U.S. based NGOs working on human rights issues in North Korea, to strengthen monitoring of humanitarian aid, to permit North Korean defectors to apply for asylum in the U.S., and to broadcast Radio Free Asia and Voice of America to North Korea. The NKFA wants "to establish a program for the distribution of radios" in coordination with NGOs based in North Korea. Even the intelligence industry's Jane's Intelligence Review (Feb 2004) says that the idea of planting radios in North Korea "demonstrates a lack of awareness of the situation on the ground," as any individual caught with a radio would be "directly suspected of illegal economic activities…[and] subject to penalties." These bills symbolize the complete ignorance of American policymakers in understanding North Korea, the famine, and ways to improve human rights there. The assumption of these bills is that the famine in North Korea was due to Kim Jong Il's policies when in fact most experts agree that a series of catastrophic events beyond North Korea's control were the main causes of famine. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which cut the shipment of oil to run tractors and their agricultural machinery. The second were historic droughts and floods that destroyed 300,000 hectares of agricultural land and wiped out 1.9 million tons of grain. Ironically, the most vocal opposition to the NKHRA has come from a wide spectrum of South Koreans, including lawmakers and human rights groups. "Our concern is that [the NKHRA] could have a negative effect on the six-way talks and on inter-Korean relations," said Yu Seon Ho of the Uri Party, which is considering an official South Korean government position to the U.S. House of Representatives. South Korean human rights groups have also forcefully come out against these bills. In a letter signed by over 100 human rights NGOs, they state that the bill would not improve human rights but stands to further aggravate international humanitarian aid and negotiations towards peace on the Korean peninsula. According to Good Friends, a widely respected humanitarian organization who has worked most with North Korean refugees, "We cannot separate the problem of human rights with the food shortage. The human rights improvement that North Korean residents want most is large-scale humanitarian food aid before anything else." Since 1995, the United States has provided about 1.9 million tons of food aid to North Korea. In 2000, the U.S. sent 500,000 tons of food to North Korea, but ever since the Bush Administration came into office, that amount has dropped to about 100,000 tons. Clearly, the Bush administration's political agenda has driven the amount of food aid to North Korea. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, when asked about the administration's policy, has said its aim is "the end of North Korea." The monitoring of humanitarian aid, however, is of less concern to the relief agencies providing the aid. In 2003, James Morris, Executive Director of the World Food Program testified to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that "It would be wrong for me to depict the regime in Pyongyang as totally uncooperative," noting that the WFP staff have access to 85 percent of the population and that they "believe that most food is getting through to the women and children who need it." A recent study by UNICEF also confirms that food aid is reaching the most vulnerable North Koreans. From 1998 to 2002, the number of underweight children dropped by two-thirds, acute malnutrition was almost cut in half, and chronic malnutrition dropped by one-third. Caritas International, the largest private humanitarian network in North Korea, is confident that food aid is reaching the most needy. On my recent visit to North Korea, I expected to see a depressed and closed off society, but I witnessed quite the contrary. North Korea seemed to be a very normal place with people walking on the streets, children playing in schools, and families singing and enjoying picnics at the Morangbang park in Pyongyang on a Sunday afternoon. I also met many conservation agriculturalists from all over the world that were working with the government to move their food production to a more sustainable, less energy intensive model. Theodor Friedrich, a senior agriculturalist with the UN FAO who has visited North Korea five times, said, "I always compare DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) with countries in Africa and Latin America where malnourishment is much more visible and omni- present than in DPRK." Friedrich also believes that "food security for an isolated DPRK would always be a very difficult challenge" since 80 percent of its land is mountainous and South Korea has historically been the country's breadbasket. Reunification may not be as far as it seemed just a few years ago, but in the meantime, if Americans truly cared about the human rights of North Koreans, they should first understand that food is the cause of the crisis and then demand our government sign a permanent peace treaty and end 50 years of economic sanctions.