NGO leader to expand NK aid projects
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Yi Il-ha, chairman of the board of aid group Good Neighbors, meets a student in April at a Malawi school during his visit to the African country. / Courtesy of Good Neighbors
By Kim Hyo-jin
Yi Il-ha, chairman of the board at the international relief and development organization Good Neighbors, plans to expand aid projects for North Korea.
He believes potential projects should be devised in ways that will strengthen economic cooperation between the two Koreas and can pave the way for unification.
“We should prepare for the moment,” Yi told The Korea Times, Tuesday. “For that purpose, the key is not simple humanitarian aid, but projects that can lead to inter-Korean economic cooperation.”
Yi, 69, had been at the forefront of international aid for over two decades. But the relief group founder recently handed its presidential post over to another activist, becoming chairman of the board.
Yi said he now plans to focus more on projects for North Korea while involving the organization in the work of its U.S. corporate body.
Noting that the non-governmental organization (NGO) has provided medicine and medical supplies to the North through its U.S. office, he said the next step is helping the isolated country produce its own medicine in a developed manner.
“There’s an international standard called Good Manufacturing Practices for pharmaceutical products,” he said. “I’m seeking to help upgrade their products so they can meet the quality regulations.”
Yi also hopes to find ways to back North Korea’s livestock industry. Since 1998, Good Neighbors has sent about 500 pregnant cows to the North, which laid the foundation for four cow farms operating there.
Over the course of its 25 years, the NGO has grown to be the largest South Korean aid group.
It has engaged in child education, community development and emergency relief projects in 35 countries. The projects include building clean-water wells in Africa, providing new cooking stoves for families in Guatemala and sponsoring child education in Guatemala, Malawi and Nepal.
It received the prestigious General Consultative Status with the United Nations in 1996, the first time for a domestic NGO, and was awarded the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Award in 2007.
Yi, onetime fundraising director of World Vision, stepped up his efforts to launch an indigenous relief group after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He recalled the period as a critical juncture when the country started changing its stance from that of a beneficiary to a donor nation.
“Foreign aid groups were withdrawing their personnel from the country at that time and, consequently, we began to adjust ourselves to the changing environment and realized an obligation to become a member nation of the U.N.”
Moreover, he was nurturing hopes of running projects with more discretion, free from control by foreign headquarters.
“I was confident with my experience of working with World Vision,” he said. “Also, I was eager to conduct humanitarian projects independently under the name of our homegrown NGO while shedding more light on projects for North Korea.
"Back then, I thought it might be difficult to approach the North politically but easier to do so through non-governmental interchanges, which still applies to the situation today."