By Kim Tae-gyu
CHANGWON — At first sight, she seemed like a typical Korean mother who is kind and gentle. As the interview continued, however, she felt like a giant as she is in charge of feeding tens of thousands of North Koreans in the poor communist country.
Kim Pil-ju is the founder of the Agglobe Services International (ASI) and teaches as an adjunct full professor at University of Minnesota. Set up in 2001, the ASI is a non-profit outfit aimed at offering humanitarian aid to impoverished nations.
Under her stewardship, the ASI runs five large farms. The combined size of the farms reaches more than 3,000 hectares in North Korea, accommodating up to 17,000 citizens including some 7,000 farmers.
They tend to refer to Kim with different titles. But mother and grandmother are most frequently used when the 74-year-old visits the southwestern part of North Korea around once a month.
“We have rented the land from the North Korean government through to 2054 free of charge. We cultivate cotton, which is bought by the government. We also grow corn, barley and other grains for residents,” Kim told The Korea Times earlier this week on the sidelines of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) meeting in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province.
“The money from the cotton sales is also allocated to the workers. In our farms, we have no hunger victims as far as I know. Some folks in other areas want to move to the farms but we cannot take them due to capacity.”
At the request of North Korea, she started the work in 1988 together with her late husband. He passed away at the start of the new millennium and had urged her to stop the difficult work.
But the U.S. citizen resumed the tasks the following year by establishing the ASI, which established its fifth farm early this year upon request by the North Korean administration.
“On his death bed, my husband said the North Korean jobs are too hard for a single person to take. Back then, I accepted his advice. But I formed the ASI to resume the tasks — I was no longer alone (thanks to the supports of ASI staff),” Kim said.
Asked what her most significant mission is at this moment, the North Korean native said that the farms need a factory to process cotton, which would cost some $2 million to build.
“With the factory, we can extract the seeds from the cotton. In addition, we can also get oils as well as feed for the animals. We have tried to find people who are able to donate,” Kim said.
She asked the South Korean government to offer financial support in 2007, the last year of the former Roh Moo-hyun administration, which took a dovish stance against the Northern regime.
The atmosphere was good at the time, she thought, but after the inauguration of the relatively hawkish Lee Myung-bak administration, there have been no official responses to her request.
Kim did not speak any strong words on thorny issues but claimed that the South should play a more active role in helping the North, particularly in the field of foresting the barren land there.
“Deforestation has developed so much in the North. As people lack fuel, they cut down trees for firewood. They even rake in fallen leaves, which results in further deforestation,” Kim said.
“South Koreans are required to think of this problem as our own. Based on our experiences of having successfully forested mountains in the short period of time, we would have to assist the North to do the same.”
Born in the northern part of North Korea in 1937, Kim moved to Seoul in 1945 when the country was liberated from Japan’s colonial rule. After studying forestry in Seoul National University, she moved to the United States and earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University.