Falling Off the Radar Screen.(North Korea)(Brief Article)

Not long ago the conditions described in a Caritas International report about a recent trip into North Korea would have given most people pause. Its authors recall sitting in unheated homes in temperatures well below freezing, with windows replaced by plastic sheeting. Decrepit orphanages whose children were severely stunted due to malnourishment pleaded for necessities like mattresses and diapers. According to the United Nations, more than 40 percent of North Korean children under 5 are chronically undernourished--and more than 2 million of them now face "a high risk of dying."

But with the world's TVs full of images of bedraggled Afghan refugees, the sorry state of North Korea seems a familiar and exasperating problem. That has aid workers worried. Although its harvest improved this year, the North still needs 1.5 million tons of food aid--costing at least $215 million--for 2002. Countries have been lining up to promise funds for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which by some estimates could require more than $6 billion. But a similar enthusiasm for helping Pyongyang is conspicuously absent: pledges even from longstanding donors have declined dramatically from the same period last year. Says John Powell, director of the U.N. World Food Program's Asia bureau: "Unless we get new commitments urgently, WFP will run out of food for North Korea in January. I cannot overestimate how serious this breakdown in the aid pipeline would be."

Six years into its food crisis, the North remains as fragile as ever. A third of the population depends on some sort of international assistance. The average life expectancy has dropped to 66.8 years (from 73.2 years in 1993). Orphanages and other institutions catering to children stay afloat from month to month. The Caritas report notes that even where rice has been harvested, torrential rains last month washed away the crop in at least one province.

At the same time donors are growing frustrated with the obvious lack of progress, despite $2 billion in international assistance since 1995. More and more are beginning to argue that without long-term economic and agricultural reforms, continued short-term food aid is useless. (One Japanese businessman who visits ...