NORTH KOREA
Where Has the Aid Gone?
By John Larkin/SEOUL
Far East Economic Review
Issue cover-dated January 25, 2001Not to save lives, says a German doctor who worked in the North. That, he says, is because aid agencies are afraid to stand up to Pyongyang
TEN YEARS as a general practitioner in the central German university town of Goettingen left Norbert Vollertsen unprepared for what he saw in North Korea: malnourished children so emaciated that they looked half their age, watching their friends die through lifeless eyes; teenage girls trekking hundreds of kilometres in freezing winters and sweltering summers to scavenge for food for their families; hospitals without windows or toilets, the doctors often starving themselves. The memories keep the 42-year-old German awake some nights. But it's anger that drives him.
Vollertsen spent 18 months in North Korea, from July 1999 to December last year, with German emergency medical-aid agency Komitee Cap Anamur, which works from 10 hospitals and three orphanages spread throughout the famine-wracked country. He wanted a change of scene from his comfortable, slow-paced life in Germany, where his 14-year marriage had ended in divorce.
He found just such a change in North Korea, gaining unusual access to many regions, thanks to his decision to supply some of his own skin to a burn victim in the port city of Haeju. For that kindness he became the first foreigner to be awarded a "friendship medal," which served as a passport to some of the suffering provinces. "The medal meant nobody stopped me when I went out by car," he says.
The medal became a ticket to a nightmare. Expecting to see conditions in the countryside reflecting the rising prosperity in Pyongyang, he found instead hospitals without basic medical equipment. "In the first four weeks I saw four children die and couldn't do anything about it," he says. "One 14-year-old girl was so thin she looked three years old. People are in such bad condition they have heart problems and brain defects due to lack of protein. Young adults have no hope, no future. You can see it in their eyes." Some find solace in a crude alcohol that dulls their sorrows, and ruins what's left of their health.
The scenes convinced him that much of the aid donated by the outside world wasn't saving the lives it was intended to save. Instead, he believes much of it is padding the pockets of ruling-party officials who cruise around town in latest-model Mercedes-Benzes and dine at fancy restaurants where they pay with U.S. dollars. Vollertsen, who admits that his evidence is anecdotal, says he has seen food and medical equipment supplied by his agency locked inside a warehouse when it should already have been distributed. On that occasion he kicked down the door. He accuses other aid organizations of not being as determined as they should be to hold Pyongyang to account for the aid it receives.
Vollertsen was forced by authorities to leave North Korea on December 30 and took a ferry from China to South Korea. In Seoul, he has declared opinions that have thrust him into the media spotlight--and set him at odds with much of the international aid community. He says international aid agencies are acting like "slaves" of Pyongyang by failing to confront North Korean authorities about patchy monitoring of aid deliveries and rampant human-rights violations, even though they have the leverage to do so.
"Foreign visitors to North Korea remark on the politeness with which senior aid workers speak to the North Koreans," Vollertsen says. "Nobody criticizes or tries to investigate where the food has gone. Pyongyang is fooling the world. Aid groups must insist on human rights and better monitoring. If they behave like slaves nothing will change."
He says United Nations agencies, in particular the World Food Programme, are too worried about getting expelled to risk annoying their hosts. But if they did try standing up to the authorities, he believes they would get a more positive response than they might expect. Though his contract with Komitee Cap Anamur ended on December 31, his views are supported by the group's founder, Rupert Neudeck, who told the REVIEW that the UN agencies' monitoring policies are "lousy."
Sitting in a hotel room in Seoul, Vollertsen still struggles to comprehend what he saw. He speaks of party officials at the airport with luggage packed with goods from Yves St. Laurent and Cartier. "An hour from Pyongyang, children are starving, and these officials are leading great lives." Fed up, he decided to start breaking the rules. He walked out of official functions before the inevitable toast to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in October, he drove a group of foreign journalists around miserably ill-equipped hospitals in defiance of orders that the press corps should not venture out unaccompanied. Intervention by the German government saved him from expulsion.
Later that month he angered his minders by insisting on examining and photographing the corpse of a soldier, apparently malnourished and tortured, lying at a roadside (a rare sight as most deaths from malnutrition occur at home and those that don't are quickly cleared away). In November, he sent a statement of humanitarian principles he believes are being violated in North Korea to Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry and to visiting U.S. Congressman Tony Hall.
That was the last straw. Vollertsen was confined to Pyongyang (and claims his car was sabotaged) until his visa ran out. Pyongyang would not renew it, and he says he didn't get any support from fellow aid workers, whom he suspects were glad to see him go.
Despite his qualms he doesn't believe aid should be stopped, and of course has no argument with the goal of saving lives. He differs with major aid organizations only on how this should be done. Anxious not to get kicked out of the country, the UN's agencies usually avoid public criticism of Pyongyang's recalcitrance so that they can work for improvements behind the scenes. In fact, the aid community can be divided into the majority who refrain from strong criticism of Pyongyang and those who choose to confront it. The latter include Médecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam and U.S. agency Care, which have pulled out of the country complaining of curbs on monitoring.
David Morton is the WFP's resident representative in Pyongyang, with the unenviable task of staying in the regime's good graces while ensuring effective aid deliveries. He also coordinates with other aid agencies working in the North, so not surprisingly he is a bit more diplomatic than Vollertsen.
Nevertheless, he admits the WFP has always been dissatisfied with the controls placed by Pyongyang on monitoring food aid, which includes prior notification of inspection visits. In 1998 the WFP cut its aid programme by 60,000 tons to protest against such restrictions.
But Morton points out that since aid began in 1995, North Korea has gone from confining aid workers mostly to Pyongyang to allowing the WFP to open branch offices in the provinces of North Pyongan, North and South Hamgyong, Ryangan and Kangwon. "These are sensitive areas where few foreigners are allowed to visit," Morton explains. He says the WFP focuses its efforts on the hard-hit northeast, while Vollertsen's activities were centred in the west. Since 1995, the WFP has delivered $650 million in food aid.
Morton insists the WFP does what it can to monitor deliveries despite the restrictions. Monitoring visits to villages, schools and hospitals number around 300 a month. A waybill system tracks food from port to destination, where arrivals are checked against the distribution plan. Morton is categorical that the lives of many children, the main beneficiaries of WFP aid, are being saved and doesn't believe aid is diverted to the army. "Nowadays we see much healthier children and our conclusion is that the aid is in fact reaching them. Whilst I respect Norbert Vollertsen's views on health issues, I do not believe that he is sufficiently knowledgeable about the food-aid programmes to be a credible observer of these programmes."
But Vollertsen fumes: "Millions of dollars have gone into North Korea, but nothing has changed in the countryside." He says he plans to try to send truckloads of medical supplies to North Korea through the border village of Panmunjom--where he was arrested by South Korean authorities on January 13 after trying to make a speech about human-rights abuses in the North. He still hopes to re-enter North Korea one day. "The situation is worse than people think," he says. "My work there is unfinished."