Rice and Two Koreas

Seoul Can Kill 'Three' Birds With One Stone

Rice, the staple food of Koreans for several millennia, is causing problems in both halves of this divided peninsula for exactly opposite reasons.

In South Korea, farmers demolish rice paddies with tractors in protest against plunging prices, while the government is going all-out to encourage rice consumption as overweight youngsters prefer flour-made food to traditional steamed rice. In the North, nearly one-third of children and women are suffering from serious malnutrition amid recurrent food shortages and deadly ``agroflation.''

So the answer could not appear simpler even to kids' eyes: Give the surplus rice to North Korea. That the Lee Myung-bak administration cannot ― or will not, as a majority of people sees it ― adopt the easy solution points to the pitiable circumstances surrounding the Koreas.

President Lee, who stopped humanitarian aid to the North since taking office about 20 months ago, recently said, ``The problems in North Korea cannot be solved by just our provision of rice and fertilizer.'' True, few can dispute North Korea has in large part brought misfortune on itself, as the ongoing food crisis could have been avoided had it allocated the money spent on nuclear and missile tests to the import of grains.

Also, there are strong suspicions that Pyongyang has diverted Seoul's food aid to its military, making it difficult for the government to decide to resume it at a time when the relationship between the two capitals is at its lowest. After all, the two Koreas are still technically at war, as inter-Korean hawks stress.

But President Lee cannot be completely free from the current stalemate in inter-Korean ties, as it was his administration that turned around from his predecessors' engagement policy, thinking it only spoiled Pyongyang, and deciding to ``teach some lessons to the arrogant North Koreans.'' Different leaders may have different views and take different policy approaches based on them, but humanitarian issues should be the last weapon to put into use.

So President Lee is wrong, and Rep. Chung Mong-joon, the new leader of the governing Grand National Party, is right. At a recent news conference, Rep. Chung said Seoul should provide food aid to the North even if part of it is diverted to the military. Chung is right in part because the South's stoppage of food aid for fear of diversion would only hurt North Korean civilians more in view of the zero-sum nature of the food policy in the impoverished country.

More importantly, providing food for starving children and women should be above political or ideological concerns, as it belongs to most fundamental humanitarian dimensions, something only extreme ideologists gripped in Cold War mindsets would fail to recognize or deny.

By resuming rice aid, Seoul can help prevent another famine in the North, ease financial difficulties for South Korean farmers and drastically improve inter-Korean relations.

President Lee, if he aims to be a leader with a long-term vision and legacy, is advised to launch a massive ``anti-famine'' project on the Korean Peninsula before it gets too late. Already, most North Korean babies are born with below-average weight and suffer stunted growth. Even a reunified Korea would suffer from crippled workforce.

As an old saying goes, one can win the hearty consent of an adversary not by force but by generosity.