91998E2411

WRITTEN QUESTION P-2411/98

by Yvan Blot (NI) to the Council

(28 July 1998)

Subject: Famine in North Korea

Alarming reports are reaching Europe on the situation in North Korea, in particular from the German Red Cross or Médecins sans Frontières. The famine has said to have killed two to three million people (about 10 % of the total population) since 1995 and continues to ravage the country, brutally impacting on some 20 % of the population, with a further 75 % barely managing to survive. The state of the population's health is catastrophic, while hospitals lack rudimentary equipment and medicines. International aid on a huge scale appears largely to have been diverted by regime officials, either for resale or to supply the armed forces.

Other, much less alarmist rumours, claim that the situation is no more than one of shortages that have been blown up out of all proportion by media under the Marxist dictatorship's control in order to elicit the international community's generosity as a means of making good the country's economic failings.

1. Can the Council specify the conditions in which European Union "observers" conducted their on-the-spot inquiries, the extent of the territorial area to which they were allowed access and the freedom of movement granted to them by Pyongyang's Marxist regime?

2. Can the Council specify what action, if any, it will take to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches only those who genuinely need it?

3. If the extent of the food-supply catastrophe turns out to have been a lie, what steps will the Council take to cease supporting one of the last and bloodiest of Communist dictatorships in the late twentieth century?

Reply

(22 October 1998)

1. The report of the UK Presidency-led Technical Mission to North Korea from 9 to 16 May 1998 was published at the beginning of June. This extensive report itself covers the conditions under which the mission conducted its enquiries, including access and free movement.

2. The Council shares the concerns of the Honourable Member regarding the distribution of humanitarian aid. The Union's concerns were alleviated by the mission's report, but continuous attention is needed to prevent misuse and to bring home the need for transparency if our assistance is to be effective or, indeed, available. This message has been put clearly in the contacts that the Union has had with North Korea.

3. The aid programmes to North Korea from the European Community and the Member States are of a purely humanitarian nature, though it is hoped that they will also promote our objective of peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula. They are in any event aimed exclusively at alleviating the plight of the North Korean people, and not at supporting the North Korean regime. It should be noted in this context that countries like the Republic of Korea and the US have similar programmes. It remains to be seen how far North Korea's unwelcome decision to spend its own scarce resources on missiles and satellites will affect the approach of the international community to humanitarian assistance.