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There is a world of difference between the way Seoul monitors distribution of its food aid in North Korea and the thorough inspections carried out by the UN World Food Program. That is the likely reason why North Korea has rejected any further food aid from the international community and asked the WFP to shut its Pyongyang office. Last year, Seoul and the WFP gave roughly similar amounts of food aid to the impoverished country.
Seoul gave the North 400,000 tons of rice last year but performed just 10 on-the-spot inspections to ensure that the food was getting to people in need. This year, it has upped aid to 500,000 tons of rice, but the number of inspections rose to only 20. When the WFP gave North Korea 366,000 tons of rice aid last year, it had about 100 staff in the country who conducted some 4,800 spot checks.
The locations are chosen differently as well. Every time Seoul sends 100,000 tons of food, North Korea provides the distribution particulars and selects the sites, saying "check here." That is followed by negotiations, but to all intents and purposes Pyongyang chooses where the inspections take place. Because South Korea can only send four or five officials to food distribution centers, there is no way it can confirm whether the food is actually getting to the families, kindergartens and hospitals that need it most. The Unification Ministry says it can do nothing else because of North Korea's ˇ°distinctive character.ˇ±
The WFP, however, adheres to a principle of "No Access, No Food.ˇ± Of North Korea's 203 districts, food aid is being distributed only in the 160 where Pyongyang permits monitoring. The WFP chooses its inspection sites -- including families and hospitals -- at random and interviews locals to see if aid is being distributed as planned. WFP Executive Director James Morris told a press conference in Seoul last month the organization's monitoring system was precise and reliable.
Experts say it is because of this difference in monitoring that Pyongyang seeks to depend more on aid from South Korea and China.
Meanwhile, the Unification Ministry has revealed that some of the rice provided the North as aid is being sold to North Koreans for W46 a kilo (2003 standard). "We cannot determine how much of the rice aid is being sold,ˇ± a Unification Ministry official said. ˇ°Because it was given as a loan, we are limited in terms of our participation in the distribution process." But Prof. Nam Seong-wook of Korea University says the aid is given ˇ°out of humanitarian concern under conditions approximating a grant -- a 30-year loan -- so for North Korea to take the rice and sell it for financial gain could be seen as a violation of inter-Korean agreements."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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