Korea Global Forum for Peace Advocates for Humanitarian Assistance to the North
As one of the few Americans who has lived and worked alongside my husband for over ten years in North Korea, I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Korea Global Forum for Peace hosted by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification. On September 8th, my presentation focused on the topic of “UN, US Sanctions on the DPRK & Its Implications on Humanitarian Assistance.”
For over twelve years, my husband and I have co-founded our organization and have been working in the DPRK through our nonprofit, Ignis Community, also known as Sunyang Hana. Ignis Community is an international organization supported by volunteers from many nations such as Korea, the United States, China, Mongolia, Singapore, and Brazil. Our humanitarian assistance in North Korea has included food and medical donations, shoe donations to orphanages and remote childcare facilities, and medical training through our Pyongyang Spine Rehabilitation Center. One of Ignis’ primary focuses is to help get medical treatment for children with developmental disabilities- a demographic with few resources in North Korea.
Take, for example, Blessing. She is just one real child out of thousands that we have the opportunity to help in North Korea. Blessing is from the Northeast Region of North Korea and has quadriplegic cerebral palsy. Like most disabled children in North Korea, Blessing was kept secretly at home, hidden. Even the family’s closest friends and co-workers did not know that Blessing existed. At the age of four, she could not chew her food or voluntarily move her muscles. Blessing’s grandmother kept her alive by chewing her food for her and then spooning it into her mouth and helping her swallow. It took Blessing and her family several days to travel from their home province to the capital city of Pyongyang, where Ignis is developing the Spine Rehabilitation Center (PYSRC). As the first training hospital for pediatric rehabilitation, the center will provide medical and therapeutic services for children with cerebral palsy, autism, and other developmental disabilities. Here, Blessing was able to learn how to voluntarily operate her mouth muscles, roll-over, and even sit-up for the first time.
Blessing helped catalyze treatment for thousands of children like her throughout the country. Prior to our program, no official treatment existed for children like Blessing. But once people started to see Blessing being treated in the hospital, they started to call friends and family back in their hometowns exclaiming, “A child like yours is being treated in the hospital. Quick! Bring your child for treatment in Pyongyang!” Mothers started lining up with their children as we began the first official treatment for children with cerebral palsy in North Korea.
Now doctors are also being trained in treatment methodologies at the Pyongyang Medical School Hospital. As we are currently treating a limited number of patients in one small room of the hospital, a Rehabilitation Center is being developed that has the potential of treating 450 outpatients and 30 in-patients every day. The North Korean Ministry of Public Health is also working to establish Pediatric Rehabilitation Centers in all ten of the country’s pediatric provincial hospitals. We have already begun developing these rehabilitation centers in Pyeongsong just north of Pyongyang, Nampo on the West Coast, and Wonsan’s Children’s Provincial Hospitals on the East Coast of North Korea.
Unfortunately, for Blessing it was not a happy ending. Due to the limited number of patients we can treat until the Rehabilitation Center is complete, Blessing returned to her home province to wait for her next round of treatment. When we went to the NE Region to invite her back for treatment, her father met us and explained, “I’m sorry. Blessing is no longer with us. She has passed on.” Although having a developmental disability is typically not a life-threatening condition in a developed nation, in developing nations, like North Korea, where life is even difficult for able-bodied people, the fact is that children with disabilities often do not survive.
With the increase in sanctions imposed on North Korea, Ignis’ success is at risk, and children like Blessing are having a harder time getting access to the treatment they so desperately need. In December of 2017, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2397, which bans the import of metal, and, as a result, restricted medical equipment such as needles, rehabilitation equipment, and lab diagnostics from entering the country. This has significantly delayed the development of our Pyongyang Spine Rehabilitation Center. Although it is possible to get an exemption for humanitarian-related items, the process can be subject to burdensome delays.
The United Nations and the United States’ government both state that they have no intention of hurting the common people of North Korea or hindering humanitarian assistance to the most-needy in the DPRK. However, the reality of providing humanitarian aid to North Korea is quite the opposite. The current political climate challenges even large NGOs such as the Red Cross and the World Health Organization to overcome obstacles and reconsider their involvement in the DPRK. Here is a list of all the medical nonprofit organizations that have been working in North Korea. Since it takes years to navigate and request all the necessary governmental permits and licenses to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable in North Korea, several of these organizations are currently no longer able to continue operating in the DPRK.
Sanctions are intended to pressure the government towards denuclearization, but what we are discovering is that instead of hurting the elite, sanctions are preventing humanitarian aid from entering the country and are causing deaths, particularly among women and children. It is estimated that in the year of 2018 alone, approximately up to 4,000 North Koreans could have died as a result of sanctions.
Unfortunately, politics are taking precedence over the value of human life. In the comprehensive report of which I and a team of independent experts authored, “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea”, it is estimated that approximately “11 million men, women, and children lack sufficient nutritious food, clean drinking water, or access to basic services like health and sanitation-affecting over 40% of the population”.
In particular, women are disproportionally affected. Due to the UN Resolution, starting in September 2017, Chinese joint-venture companies were also required to close and leave the DPRK. This directly affected the textile industry, which primarily employs women including our own organization’s shoe manufacturing social entrepreneurship in the Rason Free Economic Zone. The report emphasizes that, “International sanctions undermine women’s status in North Korea, negatively impacting their economic and social rights, and thus inhibiting them from engaging in civic and political life.”
The current extent of sanctions on North Korea, though, is so severe that even humanitarian organizations have difficulty shipping medical equipment and food into the nation. This is not only because of what is explicitly stated in the sanctions but also because U.S. sanctions have highly discouraged banks from working with nonprofit organizations on the ground in North Korea. These banking issues are the number one reason why many nonprofit organizations are no longer able to operate in the DPRK. Even travel permits to U.S. NGO workers have been denied at times by the U.S. State Department. As all U.S. citizens are banned from traveling to the DPRK, the State Department states that they are preparing multiple-entry Special Validation Passports for humanitarian workers. However, because of the coronavirus outbreak, all current Special Validation Passport applications for DPRK-related humanitarian purposes are currently being automatically denied.
Ignis Community began applying for the appropriate licenses to provide humanitarian assistance in the DPRK in 2016. To continue our life-saving work for children with disabilities, our organization was required to obtain a license from the U.S. Treasury Department, a license from the Department of Commerce, and an exemption from the UN Sanctions Committee, in addition to Special Validation Passports each time we visit the DPRK. We finally obtained all necessary licenses for the development of the treatment center in September of last year-over three years after we began the process.
Our case is not unique; providing humanitarian aid to the DPRK requires years of applying for permits and licenses not only from the United States but from the United Nations. Legal expertise is also necessary to navigate the technical requirements to operate in North Korea, decreasing and delaying the delivery of humanitarian assistance. In the meantime, the common people of North Korea, who need help the most, are the ones who are suffering.
Now with the global outbreak of COVID-19, humanitarian organizations are facing yet another layer of obstacles making humanitarian work nearly impossible in the DPRK. Providing humanitarian assistance to North Korea was never easy. It required working with multiple governments including not only the DPRK government but also the Chinese government and our home country governments. This is because all humanitarian aid has to be shipped into the DPRK through China, but at the same time we also have to abide by the laws of our home countries. For Ignis Community, also known as Sunyang Hana, this means cooperating with four governments: the U.S. government, the South Korean Ministry of Unification, Chinese customs, and the DPRK government. Because of these complications, when global sanctions were imposed upon the DPRK many nonprofit organizations were forced to stop operating in the country.
But now with the coronavirus outbreak, just about all humanitarian work in North Korea has stopped. The borders to the DPRK are closed, and many humanitarian shipments being sent into the country have been delayed. With strict procedures in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, few vessels are traveling back and forth from ports in China to the DPRK. Many humanitarian organizations have shipments that have been waiting for up to eight months in China and have yet to be delivered to the people of North Korea. Miraculously, Ignis Community was able ship three 40-foot containers of medical equipment into Pyongyang, which arrived on June 14th this year. However, our second, larger shipment of medical equipment is now stalled due to a recent outbreak of coronavirus in Dalian, China.
In the midst of a world-wide pandemic, humanitarian engagement with any country, regardless of politics, should be fueled by the desire to save lives. The value of human life should always supersede the state of diplomatic relations with any country. Currently, the DPRK is affected not only by global sanctions and the COVID-19 outbreak but also by flooding and several typhoons. As a result, humanitarian assistance should not be subject to political whims but should be separated from other sanctions imposed upon North Korea. Therefore, the authors and organizations involved with the comprehensive report I mentioned have called for an immediate review and modification of the current global sanctions on the DPRK. Otherwise we are turning our backs on actual innocent children, like Blessing, just as we have a chance to bring them the help that they need.
