Asia Times: The Koreas


	June 11, 2002	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Food, football, floods: Sprigs of hope?
By Aidan Foster-Carter

The last pair of Pyongyang Watch columns summarized the many and varied ways in which North Korea makes itself a right royal pain to the rest of the world. Maybe some balance is now called for, or at least a change of tone. For good things happen, too, in and to Pyongyang. So let's lay aside the totalizing critique for a moment, and look at some recent signs of hope: fresh shoots that may yet bloom into flower.

First, bravo to George W Bush (and when did you last hear me say that?). On Friday, the United States said that it would give another 100,000 tons of food - wheat, rice and dairy products - to Pyongyang via the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP). Axis of evil? "We are prepared to feed people in North Korea in spite of our ongoing concerns regarding the policies of [its] government," said the US Agency for International Development. WFP had warned that an aid shortfall could mean a break in its food pipeline as soon as next month.

As it happens, the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Andrew Natsios, wrote a book - the first - on what he calls The Great North Korean Famine (US Institute of Peace, 2001). Unlike some of his fellow Republicans, Natsios is against using food aid as a political weapon. Back in 1997, in a Washington Post opinion article headlined "Don't play politics with hunger", he warned against "a potentially deadly game of famine roulette" in Korea.

True, as we've noted before, the political economy of US farm support is a factor too. Funding will come from the Agriculture Department's Section 416b program, one of whose aims is to reduce the crop surpluses that other federal aid - soon slated to increase, under Bush's much-criticized new farm support bill - helps US farmers pile up year after year. Market forces, anyone? Never mind. Whatever the motive or context, I'm just glad that more innocent women and children will now get fed. And Japan, please take note and send some more of those surplus rice stocks before they rot. Playing politics with people's lives is unworthy.

From food to football: a topic hard to avoid at the moment. Also on Friday, it was announced that North Korea would send its national soccer squad to the South in September, and play South Korea in Seoul's Sangam World Cup stadium. Interestingly, this news came from a third party: the Europe-Korea Foundation (EKF), a project of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea. EUCCK's secretary general, Jean-Jacques Grauhar, lived for several years in Pyongyang before moving to Seoul. Besides sending thousands of footballs to the North, EKF arranged the recent visit to Pyongyang of Park Geun-hye, daughter of ex-president Park Chung-hee and now a potential third-force contender herself. So although the late Park and his northern nemesis Kim Il-sung never met, their respective offspring had dinner a deux. Another tiny step forward.

As to North-South soccer: well yes, it will be nice if it happens - a necessary caveat, given Pyongyang's penchant for pulling out - considering the paucity now of other inter-Korean contacts. Yet it's also a sad reminder of chances missed, and how little we've progressed down the years. It's not as if this were some kind of first contact to get all excited about. In 1990, already, we had North-South soccer games; even a joint youth team. And in 1991, a North-South pair won the women's world table-tennis championship - in the name of a single country, called Korea. Now that was progress. This is just making up lost ground.

Shots missed? Forget one paltry exhibition game. Pyongyang could have had a piece of the World Cup action, gratis - just as it could have had part of the Olympics, back in 1988. Then, at least they talked it over. This time, with Kim Dae-jung desperate to revive "Sunshine" and Hyundai scion Chung Mong-joon - Seoul's Mr Football - nursing presidential ambitions, a share of the planet's biggest event was Kim Jong-il's for the asking. But the North didn't even answer the world soccer controlling agency's letters, choosing instead to stage its Arirang mass games as a rival (dream on, comrades). Yet now Northern TV is showing World Cup highlights, offering a rare glimpse of Seoul; small progress, again. Not that they asked permission, signed a contract, paid money, or anything so capitalist. They just filched it, as usual. And will get away with it, as usual.

Food, football - and floods. An earlier column examined Southern fears that one or more Northern dams might either spring a leak that could deluge the South downriver, or - in more paranoid versions - were purposely designed to do just that. An indignant Pyongyang protested that its construction was perfect, and accused Seoul of provocation by even raising such a thing. But the message seems to have gotten through. On May 31, the North notified the South - out of "brotherly love" - that it would open the sluices at its Imnam dam near Mount Kumgang from June 3. A moderate 120 tons per hour of muddy water duly flowed.

Again, it's good that Pyongyang got in touch. Better would be to notify the precise discharge schedule, as Seoul has asked. Better yet, do this regularly. Best of all, institutionalize joint water management: agreed after the 2000 summit, but - like so much else - never implemented.

Brotherly love is both too much and too little. It implies this is some kind of one-off, ad hoc, generous concession - when what we really need is sustained, low-key, efficient, and above all cumulative bilateral cooperation. Is Kim Jong-il ready for that? I yearn to be convinced. Yet on this evidence it still looks more like the old snakes and ladders: the odd hopeful gesture, but then back to Square 1 and start over. A new century demands a real new leaf.

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