Ask a North Korean: what do North Koreans think about NGOs working in the DPRK?
"I was never able to benefit from any of the food and medicine sent by humanitarian organizations"
In-hua Kim May 15, 2020
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Greetings, NK News reader! Welcome to Ask a North Korean, the feature where you can email in with your questions about life in North Korea and have them answered by our defector writers.
Today’s question is from Yasuko in Japan, who asks what North Koreans think about NGOs working in the country.
Various humanitarian groups have over the years worked in North Korea to bring help to those in need.
However, there have been accusations leveled at the North Korean government that international aid does not always reach its intended target, and is instead given only to those loyal to the regime.
In-hua Kim discusses her experiences during the famine of the 1990s, when she most needed such aid herself, below.
Got a question for In-hua? Email it to ask@nknews.org with your name and city. We’ll be publishing the best ones.
Donations from abroad sent to North Korea do not always reach their intended target | Photo: UNICEFI was never able to benefit from any of the food and medicine sent by humanitarian organizations when I lived in North Korea.
Several countries send aid through the UN to alleviate the misery of North Koreans, who suffer from food shortages. But those starving people aren’t actually receiving any of it.
On the TV and in the newspapers, ordinary people see reports that tens of thousands of tonnes of food, fertilizer, and oil are being donated to the country from abroad. They breathe a sigh of relief, thinking they’ll live on.
But only the upper elite, research institutes, frontline army units, and Pyongyang residents receive the UN’s rice and medicine.
Even today, speaking of the wretched lives of North Koreans from the early nineties onwards brings tears to my eyes.
The nation was grieving following the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, and soon after the famine known as the Arduous March began. By this time, all North Koreans felt as if they were hovering the threshold between life and death.
1996 was the hardest year of my life.
When the Arduous March began, the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces decided to distribute army rice rations to the general population to alleviate their suffering.
As the family of a soldier, I was receiving food rations from my husband’s army unit. From March, however, only my husband could get rations. This was because food rations for the family of soldiers were to be counted as military rice.
With no rice, we could only scrape by with meals from my husband, who was still working at the base. My daughter and I survived on food made from mugwort.
Several countries send help to those in need in North Korea, but it seems many ordinary people aren’t aware of these donations | Photo: NK NewsEvery mealtime my husband would say he had already eaten at his barracks. If we had rice, he and I would sob as we quarreled, urging the other to eat it.
My husband was unable to eat properly but still went to work. I began occasionally going to my parents’ house for a little bit of rice.
It was during this time that we found out through TV and news reports that the UN had sent food and medicine.
The family of soldiers such as myself were overjoyed. As the country’s train system was not running on time then, we expected the eagerly awaited aid would arrive in around two weeks’ time. But along came fall, and the food had still not come.
According to word of mouth, the rice and medicine the UN had donated had gone either to Pyongyang or other particularly hard-hit cities where people were dying in large numbers.
In North Korea, the military is always entrusted with the biggest challenges facing the country. We military families just accepted our difficult circumstances as our destiny.
The UN’s aid was eventually sold on the market. It was an open secret that the institutions who received material assistance passed it on to traders who used it to make a buck.
North Korea merely pretended that supplies from the UN, South Korea, and other countries had been given out to its people.
Even today, speaking of the wretched lives of North Koreans from the early nineties onwards brings tears to my eyes
North Koreans aren’t even aware that certain foreigners are helping the country. There was no way to find out in the beginning, and even if they knew there was no way to meet them; the government blocks interactions between foreigners and ordinary North Koreans.
Most don’t even know what NGOs are. Those who do belong to the tiny minority with family in South Korea. These defectors receive help from NGOs when they take the treacherous path to freedom through China and Southeast Asia.
In fact, my husband, son, and I arrived safely in South Korea with the help of NGOs.
There are many North Koreans who want to defect to the South. If they knew about NGOs, people who help those in need, they would dance with joy.
Unfortunately though, North Korea completely blocks the flow of all information into the country, so there’s no way to ask for their help.
There’s only one way for North Koreans to connect with NGOs, and that’s through the smugglers risking their lives going back and forth across the border with China to make a living.
It’s thanks to these smugglers that defectors are able to leave the country and receive the help of NGOs to safely make it to South Korea.
It’s time we North Korean defectors in South Korea work together and make efforts to let the North Korean people know about the missions of NGOs, as well as the truth about the UN and other foreign friends that they should be grateful for.
Edited by James Fretwell
In-hua Kim
In-hua Kim is a pseudonym for a North Korean defector writer. She left the DPRK in 2018, and now resides in South Korea.
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