UN agency to resume N Korean aid

From: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4760425.stm

North Korea is to allow renewed shipments of international food aid six months after it cracked down on foreign aid agencies.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is to resume its operations in the North, but on a much smaller scale than before.

Pyongyang last year said it did not need foreign aid - a move seen as an attempt to curb monitoring activities by outsiders in the secretive society.

The WFP said such a change would leave millions of people hungry.

The two sides have been negotiating a solution ever since, and Tony Banbury, the WFP regional director, hailed the deal as an "important breakthrough".

The WFP, which hopes to resume its operation within two weeks, will now only feed 1.9m of the "most needy" people in North Korea, Mr Banbury told a news conference on Thursday.

He appealed for fresh pledges of aid from donors to meet the new demand.

In previous years, it provided food for 6.5m people.

Under the new operation, foreign WFP staffing will be one-third of what it was, and provincial offices have been closed, restricting it to a much smaller area than before.

Legacy of famine

North Korea has relied for more than a decade on foreign donations to feed its people.

The WFP began working in the country in the mid 1990s, after about two million people died from famine.

But it suspended aid in September when the North Koreans asked it to switch its focus to economic development, not food hand-outs, saying harvests had improved.

North Korea has continued to ask for food aid from China and South Korea, which do not insist on full monitoring of its distribution.

That raised concern the food could be sent to the military or members of the political elite rather than those most in need, says the BBC correspondent in Seoul, Charles Scanlon.

Malnourishment

According to the WFP, the country still faces a sizeable cereals deficit, and North Korea still cannot feed its own people even with a good harvest.

According to the most recent large-scale survey, in October 2004, the WFP found that 37% of young children were chronically malnourished, and one-third of mothers were malnourished and anaemic.

In a recent report Human Rights Watch said a return to state rationing was leaving the most vulnerable people at risk. It said food was distributed in a discriminatory manner favouring those seen as loyal to the regime.

Mr Banbury said the new, limited, food distribution programme was "not everything we wanted, but it's a sound base to get started on again - and to build on".

Six North Korean Refugees Enter U.S.

By FOSTER KLUG
The Associated Press
Saturday, May 6, 2006; 3:08 PM

WASHINGTON -- Six refugees from North Korea, including four women who say they were victims of sexual slavery or forced marriages, have fled to the United States, a senator said Saturday.

The group is the first from North Korea to be given official refugee status since passage of a 2004 law that makes it easier for North Koreans to apply for such status.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said the six refugees arrived at an undisclosed U.S. location Friday night from a Southeast Asian nation. He would not identify from which nation they came because of worries about security for their families and to avoid diplomatic complications with the country that sent them.

"This is a great act of compassion by the United States and the other countries involved," said Brownback, a co-sponsor of the law. He said that the refugees' arrival in the United States showed "the act is working" by making the refugees' human rights a part of U.S. policy toward the North.

The issue of North Korean human rights has gained attention in Washington as international diplomatic efforts to curb North Korea's self-announced nuclear weapons production program have stalled.

President Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, branded North Korea one of the three members of the "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.

In 2004, Congress passed the North Korean Human Rights Act, part of which specified that the State Department would make it easier for North Koreans to try for refugee status in the United States.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to have fled across their border into China.

The U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights, Jay Lefkowitz, told a congressional hearing last week: "We need to do more _ and we can and will do more _ for the North Korean refugees."

"We will press to make it clear to our friends and allies in the region that we are prepared to accept North Korean refugees for resettlement here," Lefkowitz said.

Bush appointed Lefkowitz last year, tasking him with raising the human rights issue and providing help for refugees fleeing the North.

North Korea long has been accused of torture, public executions and other atrocities against its people. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are believed to be held in prison camps for political reasons, the State Department said in a report last year.

Human rights activists have said that U.S. Embassy workers in Asian countries have refused to help North Korean refugees.

Last year, Timothy Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, told lawmakers at a hearing that U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing rebuffed him when he tried to arrange help for a 17-year-old North Korean refugee.

"I thought to myself, 'Is this the State Department's implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act?'" he said.

US to accept N Korean refugees

From correspondents in Washington, April 28, 2006
Taken from The Sunday Times http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,18956100%5E1702,00.html

THE US today said it would soon begin accepting North Korean refugees, as President George W. Bush pushed to the fore human rights concerns in the Stalinist state.

The White House said Mr Bush tomorrow would hold a rare meeting with relatives of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea, seen as part of his campaign to internationalise rights issues in the state he has called the "axis of evil".

"We will be in a position relatively soon to welcome North Korean refugees in the United States," said Jay Lefkowitz, Mr Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea.

The administration has overcome bureaucratic hurdles and security concerns to set up an appropriate mechanism to accept the refugees, Mr Lefkowitz told a Congressional hearing, where lawmakers criticised the administration for a delay in accepting the refugees.

Mr Bush had signed a law 18 months ago to tackle human rights issues in North Korea, including accepting North Korean refugees for domestic resettlement.

"I believe that we are now in a position to begin to process refugees in an appropriate way, in a safe way without jeopardising (their safety and our security)," Mr Lefkowitz said.

He expressed frustration over China's refusal to cooperate with the United States or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to alleviate the plight of North Korean refugees, most of whom are in China.

Washington could force China into "arbitration" at the world body to resolve the longstanding issue, he said.

Up to 300,000 North Koreans have fled to China, escaping oppression and starvation in their Stalinist homeland, human rights groups said.

But China normally sends North Korean refugees back to their country, where some are believed to have been executed.

China claims they are "economic migrants" and is obligated to repatriate them under an agreement with Pyongyang on border security.

"We may want to press the UNHCR to take things to the next step," Mr Lefkowitz said.

"Certainly, one of the options available that should be on the table is the question of forcing Beijing into arbitration."

It is not known how many North Korean refugees would be accepted initially into the United States. Nearly 8000 North Koreans have so far resettled in South Korea.

Mr Bush's efforts to highlight human rights concerns in North Korea may further complicate efforts to resolve a four-year nuclear row between it and the US.

Six-nation negotiations to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive were suspended in November after Washington imposed financial sanctions on the Stalinist state over counterfeiting and money laundering charges.

An administration official confirmed the White House meeting tomorrow between Mr Bush and a group of relatives of Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The kidnapping issue is a highly emotional topic in Japan and overshadows other subjects on the table with North Korea, such as its nuclear weapons and missile programs that directly threaten Japan's security.

Among those who will be greeted by Mr Bush is 70-year-old Sakie Yokota, whose daughter was abducted from Japan by North Korean agents at the age of 13 in 1977.

"I pray that the people of Japan and America, and all freedom-loving people of the world, in unison, will clearly demonstrate to North Korea that we are really angry," a sobbing Yokota told the Congressional hearing today.

"I plead for all countries to join us in saying that we will not forgive the abductions, all the victims must be returned immediately or we will initiate economic sanctions."

North Korea has admitted kidnapping Japanese civilians to train its spies and in 2002 handed over to Tokyo five victims and their families.

Japan believes at least eight more are alive and kept under wraps because they know secrets.