KoreaToday NGOs to North Korea fight to stay relevant

Amid signs of dialogue, groups hope for better days

By Kim Young-jin

When aid worker Kang Young-sik travelled to North Korea in August, it was a pyrrhic victory. The South Korean government had allowed his organization to do its work, but being in the impoverished North, he lamented he wasn’t able to do more.

The Korean Sharing Movement, chaired by Kang, had been sidelined for months since the Lee administration imposed sanctions on Pyongyang in the wake of the deadly sinking of the warship Cheonan in March 2010.

But given massive flooding in the North and reconciliatory gestures between the sides, the government temporarily allowed for the distribution of aid.

“Things were improving,” Kang said of his group’s trip to distribute malaria medication and food supplies. “But we were still only doing what the government had done in the past.”

But the aid was about to come to a halt ― again ― after the North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November. “It’s extremely frustrating,” he said. “Humanitarian aid should never depend on politics, on what’s going on between the Koreas.”

The predicament highlights the plight of non-governmental groups (NGOs) here, who work to provide aid to a North Korean population suffering from chronic food shortages and a host of health problems. The administration’s hard line policy, they say, has driven many NGOs to the brink of collapse.

It also illustrates a long-running debate, drawn largely down party lines, over how to help North Koreans on one hand while dealing with the Kim Jong-il regime’s provocative behavior on the other.

It is a quandary that the administration has wrestled with. As the two sides once again take steps to reconcile, and the humanitarian situation in the North appears to worsen, Seoul says humanitarian aid could be resumed sooner than later. But the North must show positive gestures first.

From sunshine to shadows

At their peak in the mid-2000s, when the liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun enacted the Sunshine Policy of rapprochement, NGO activity in the North was robust and travel access far freer.

“Our work was development-oriented. We were educating North Koreans on medical care, helping them develop their agriculture,” Kang recalled. In 2004 alone, South Korean NGOs mobilized $140 million in aid.

The policy earned the late former President Kim a Nobel Prize, but drew critics who feared aid was diverted to support the military and that the goodwill had not yielded results on critical inter-Korean issues.

When the conservative Lee administration came into power in 2008, it brought in a tough line on the North, halting economic aid drastically and rejecting Pyongyang's overtures for concessions. The North, it said, must denuclearize if it wanted help building its economy.

After the sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 in waters near the maritime border, the Lee administration imposed a moratorium on travel to the North as well as state funding of the NGOs.

Park Hyun-seok, secretary general of the Korea NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea (KNCCNK), a coalition of 56 groups, said as many as 16 groups have folded as a result of the measures.

Others have failed to settle their membership dues, and the KNCCNK has had to postpone its annual pan-coalition meeting as the groups figure out how to budget for the year.

The groups are now forced to rely on private-sector funding, but even that is drying up.

“It is a difficult situation, given the government policy and the fact that public sentiment has turned conservative after the Yeonpyeong incident,” said Park, who also heads aid group New World Nice People.

“We despise the Kim Jong-il regime, too. But mustn’t we love our fellow Koreans? This is our pitiful situation.”

'We must start the process'

After torrential summer rains caused the Yalu River to flood last summer, 10 KCCNK groups were mobilized to provide food supplies such as flour and powdered milk, and medical items such as cold medicine.

But after the shelling, which killed four, including two civilians, all humanitarian aid was shut down. Soon after, a white paper released by the Ministry of Unification declared a formal end to the Sunshine era.

But according to Lee Jong-joo, a spokeswoman of the Unification Ministry that oversees inter-Korean affairs, the door could soon open for the resumption of aid activities.

“The possibility is there,” she said. “We definitely have an idea to resume our funding of NGOs. But the North needs to change its behavior.”

Seoul wants the North to apologize for the two provocations and show its genuine intent to dismantle its nuclear program before aid restarts.

If it does denuclearize, the administration has said it is ready to mobilize massive economic aid.

Officials say Seoul is willing to engage working-level talks with the North in mid-February to pave the way for high-level military talks, the first such meetings since the shelling.

Resumption of inter-Korean dialogue “is a long process,” the spokeswoman said. “This does not mean we must finish the process in order for us to resume aid. But we must start the process.”

“We know it is so important to provide humanitarian aid. For humanitarian reasons, we are willing to give aid. We are trying to find room to do so.”

The ministry says it will prioritize human rights and the conditions of the North Korean people this year. A pillar of that plan, Lee said, is to provide funds to South Korean NGOs. “We definitely understand how difficult the situation is for the NGOs,” she said.

Ready to mobilize

Coalition head Park, who maintains communication with the North Korean government, said Pyongyang’s calls for aid have intensified since the new year as the North gets hit with brutally cold winters.

The North has gone as far as proposing a meeting with the KNCCNK in February to discuss aid requests, but so far, the government has yet to approve the meeting.

Meanwhile, NGOs from European countries have stepped up efforts, according to reports, in areas such as health care, agriculture and food research.

Eugene Bell, a U.S.-based NGO with a South Korean branch, has been running a program to tackle the tuberculosis epidemic in the country, in particular a dangerous strain of the disease known as multi-drug-resistant TB. The group last visited the North in November, where it has some 550 patients.

Meanwhile, neither Park nor Kang were overly optimistic that the recent overtures at inter-Korean dialogue would result in the lifting of the restrictions, but both said they were ready to mobilize at anytime.

For now, though, they continue to vent frustration towards the administration.

“We are not interested in politics or foreign policy,” Park said, his voice breaking up. “It is one thing for the government to cease their support; but for it to prevent even us from acting is surely too harsh. They need to open up a path for us.”

Korea Times intern Joy J. Han contributed to this article