Opinion - The Korea Times

Setting an example

By John BurtonPresident Moon Jae-in has apparently recognized that humanitarian aid is a good means to help revive stalled talks on North Korea's nuclear program. Last week, Seoul announced that it would provide 50,000 tons of rice to North Korea as that country faces a looming food shortage this summer. It was the first such planned shipment of rice by South Korea since 2010, when it sent 5,000 tons.This follows an $8 million donation by Seoul earlier in June to two U.N. agencies, the World Food Program and UNICEF, to help feed North Koreans and provide prenatal care. Moon had previously pledged the money in September 2017, but had then delayed its disbursement when Pyongyang conducted missile and nuclear tests shortly thereafter.The delivery of 50,000 tons of rice still falls far short of the total food aid that North Korea will need this year. The U.N. recently estimated that the country will require imports of nearly 1.4 million tons of food to adequately feed the population. Seoul suggested that it would offer more food aid after reviewing “the results of this round of sup

Jun 24, 2019By John Burton

Trump considers visiting DMZ

John Burton

Debating NK's food crisis

By John Burton Questions are being raised over the extent of North Korea's current food crisis, with supporters of humanitarian aid saying that help is urgently needed to avoid a famine, while critics claim that Pyongyang is exaggerating the situation.The debate reflects deeper ethical questions that have long dogged humanitarian aid to North Korea: Is it helping prop up the totalitarian Kim regime or does the global community have a moral responsibility to aid those most in need no matter the nature of their government?At issue are recent estimates by two U.N. agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP), that North Korea in 2018 suffered its worst harvest in a decade. They calculated that North Korea produced 4.9 metric tons of crops last year, resulting in a food shortfall of 1.36 tons.The FAO suggests that 10.9 million people, or about 43 percent of the country's population, are now at risk of food shortages, while about a fifth of North Korean children face “chronic malnutrition.”Although North Korea's food situation is bad,

Jun 10, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Climate change and North Korea

By John Burton North Korea's agricultural sector has long been mismanaged, but climate change is now making the situation much worse.Over the past year, North Korea has seen record summer temperatures, severe droughts and then damaging floods from heavy rainfall due to typhoons ― all the result of changing Arctic weather patterns caused by global warming.Two U.N. agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP), estimated recently that North Korea produced 4.9 million tons of crops last year, its worst harvest in a decade, resulting in a food shortfall of 1.36 million tons. Total food supply fell by 9 percent. The outlook for this year looks dire. The production of the early harvest is 20 percent lower than last year due to a reduced amount of snow, which normally covers the ground and protects early harvest crops such as wheat, barley and potato crops. Some of the food that survived last year's bad weather was left in fields for weeks due to a lack of transport and fuel caused by international sanctions and was then eaten by rats and insects.Sta

May 28, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Politics of aid

By John BurtonLost amidst the alarming news over the past week about North Korea's test firing of short-range missiles and the U.S. seizure of a North Korean cargo ship was an expression of support by U.S. President Donald Trump for Seoul's proposal to provide food aid to Pyongyang.This development highlights that humanitarian assistance is vital to keeping the door open for more talks with North Korea even as the U.S. refuses to ease economic sanctions, which has angered Pyongyang. Trump endorsed the idea of food aid for North Korea in a phone conversation with President Moon Jae-in last week following the release of a joint food security assessment by two United Nations agencies, the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that warned that North Korea faces a chronic food shortage.The FAO estimated that 10.9 million North Koreans, or about 43 percent of the population, continue to suffer from food insecurity due to falling crop yields and lower rations delivered by the government's Public Distribution System. About 20 percent of North Korean childr

May 13, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

United front

By John Burton North Korean leader Kim Jong-un began his diplomatic breakout a year ago when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in March 2018 and then followed up with Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump. He has now concluded this initial outreach campaign by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in Vladivostok. In the process, Kim has acquired two valuable allies in China and Russia who are likely to help push back against U.S. pressure on North Korea. Both Beijing and Moscow share similar attitudes on the nuclear issue and are likely to cooperate closely in the future. Although China and Russia, two of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members, have publicly stated that they favor a non-nuclear status for the Korean Peninsula, both realize that this is probably not a realistic goal because Pyongyang will be unwilling to give up its nuclear weapons since they are the only guarantee of Kim's survival. Moreover, they view U.S pressure on North Korea as an example of what they believe is Washington's policy of deposing regimes it does not like. China and Ru

Apr 29, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Warmbier mystery

By John BurtonU.S. President Donald Trump got into hot water in late February when he was asked at a press conference following his unsuccessful summit with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi whether he had discussed the treatment of Otto Warmbier with the North Korean leader. The case of Warmbier had become a cause celebre after the University of Virginia student had returned to the U.S. in June 2017 in a comatose state after being held in North Korea for 17 months for “hostile” actions against the state. He died days after his return. The widely accepted narrative in the U.S. was that Warmbier had fallen into a coma after he was tortured and mistreated in a North Korean jail. “I did speak about it, but I don't believe [Kim Jong-un] would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen,” said Trump in response to the question. Kim “felt badly about it. He knew the case very well, but he knew it later.” Trump's remarks were taken as another example of how the president likes to cozy up to the autocratic leaders from Russian

Apr 15, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Hawks resurgent

By John BurtonIt has been more than a month since the collapse of the summit in Hanoi between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung-un and there are signs that the hawks are trying to reassert their influence in Washington.Attention has focused on John Bolton, the U.S National Security Adviser, who has consistently pursued a hardline policy on North Korea since his days in the George W. Bush administration. When Bolton was appointed Trump's top security adviser last year, there was widespread speculation that he would try to derail reconciliation moves between Washington and Pyongyang. But Trump's willingness to hold two summits with Kim suggested that Bolton had been sidelined.Since the Hanoi summit, Bolton has become more outspoken. He has blamed North Korea for being unwilling to take the necessary steps to reach a nuclear deal. Bolton's remarks suggest a return to an “all or nothing” stance of demanding that North Korea first denuclearize before sanctions are lifted. Bolton also has renewed calls for China to take a tougher stance on the North.

Apr 1, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Solution to Korea jobless woes

By John BurtonPresident Moon Jae-in faces a host of economic problems. Growth is slowing. Job creation is being hobbled by hikes in the minimum wage. Youth unemployment remains high. Domestic consumer spending is weakening. Lagging productivity threatens to lead to a loss of global competitiveness, while squeezing profit margins. Exports are slipping due to soft overseas demand and the U.S.-China trade dispute. All these factors are undermining confidence in the economy and threatening to increase jobless numbers.So what should Moon do? Perhaps he should consider introducing universal basic income (UBI), which provides a minimum monthly payment to every citizen, no matter if they are rich or poor. A recent two-year UBI experimental program in Finland found that although it did not solve the country's unemployment problem, it did make its recipients happier and less stressed. Perhaps, more importantly from the viewpoint of Moon's struggling government, “basic income recipients trusted politicians considerably more,” according to the study. UBI has recently been touted acro

Mar 18, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

What next?

By John Burton A successful outcome to the Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was always based on the premise that both sides were willing to take gradual steps and make compromises.The outlines of a potential deal were already clear before the Hanoi summit. The U.S. would agree to a declaration ending the Korean War, scale back or cancel joint military exercises with Seoul and establish a liaison office in Pyongyang in the first step toward diplomatic normalization. In return, North Korea would allow some nuclear inspectors into the country and dismantle more nuclear and missile facilities, while keeping its freeze on nuclear and missile testing in place. These steps could be accompanied by a partial easing of U.S. sanctions.Given this context, it appears that both Trump and Kim overplayed their hand. Kim demanded that tough U.N. sanctions that had been imposed since 2016 be lifted in return for dismantling North Korea's nuclear facility at Yongbyon, while leaving the fate of other suspected nuclear facilities in the country unclear.

Mar 4, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Attitude adjustment

By John BurtonIt is said that generals always fight the last war. The same can be said of much of the commentary that is coming out of Washington, D.C., ahead of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi at the end of February.The traditional national security community in the U.S. is already predicting the summit will be a failure. That view is influenced by dated Cold War strategic thinking. There is a reluctance to acknowledge that Trump, Kim and President Moon Jae-in are trying to break the long-standing stalemate over North Korea's nuclear issue with experimental and top-down diplomacy that challenges conventional wisdom. The first Trump-Kim summit in Singapore last June was largely dismissed by U.S. commentators on both the right and left as a triumph of showbiz over substance. This ignores the fact that the meeting deliberately focused on establishing a personal bond between the two leaders, an essential element if a deal should be reached. It also explains why the emphasis at the first summit was on establishing the ove

Feb 18, 2019By John Burton

John Burton

Read more

Setting an example

Debating NK's food crisis

Climate change and North Korea

Politics of aid

United front

Warmbier mystery

Hawks resurgent

Solution to Korea jobless woes

What next?

Attitude adjustment

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