| dc.description.abstract | The main focus of my thesis concerns the motives of South Korean food aid policy and the impact it has had on the famine in North Korea. Since the beginning of food aid to the DPRK, the controversy of the food aid and its condition was a main issue between North Korea and international aid organizations. Especially with the huge increase in South Korea’s bilateral and relatively rare monitoring needed for food aid to North Korea in 2000, the controversy over the food aid and its monitoring level has been shown transferred from between North Korea and WFP to between South Korea and WFP. This thesis studies the distinguished motives of Kim, Youngsam’s administration (1993-1997), the first government to give food aid with the beginning of the food crisis in North Korea, and Kim, Daejung’s administration (1998-2002), a government to formalize bilateral food aid in the form of a loan, and how it works and affects the famine in North Korea.
In order to further overall understand motives of two administrations’ food aid policy from 1993 to 2002 and its effect on the famine in the North Korea, I studied the inner and outer factors effecting famine in North Korea: three basic factors, politics, ideology, and the economy of North Korea, have played a role to intensify control over North Koreans.
It can be said that the reason of food insecurity in North Korea was the failure of food governance. North Korea failed to accomplish citizens’ right to food access, availability, stability, and quality as a result of biased national security, ideological isolationism, and misusage of economic resources: the priority of political discussion in the DPRK is too heavily concentrated on national security, exactly military security not human security; Ju-che ideology failed to enter into the international community demanding responsibility, accountability, transparency; the failure of production are the contradiction of the principle of communist economic system, outer economic sanctions, and natural disasters.
In conclusion, food aid to North Korea that comes from the special relationship between South and North Koreas has made it possible for the South Korean government to provide to North Korea a food aid of an exceptional nature which is different from the food aid that has been adopted by international society, and was able to obtain the expected results like normalization of the South-North relationship, but regarding whether it has contributed, through ensuring transparency in distribution, to alleviation of the difficulty of the people that belong to the class suffering from food shortage, it can be said to have brought about a doubtful result. Therefore, South Korea’s food aid policy toward North Korea should be readjusted in such a way that it could meet the political, economic and social motives that have their roots in the special relationship of the two, secure transparency in distribution, and strengthen North Korean people’s entitlement to food. | nor |