Saving Lives in North Korea

So let's talk a little bit about the dynamics of aid delivery in a regime like that.

So there is an interesting tension here in aid delivery that the book also talks about.

So monitoring aid in a system that is built on secrecy, suspicion, you know, is basically organized around hierarchies leading up to the supreme leader.

And they have build such hierarchies in very stable ways, as you pointed out, Mike, across generations.

But aid delivery is really hard in a context like that because there is this constant worry that one would need to have that food would be diverted to the military, the party elite, that international aid would be used to strengthen the system and not come to benefit the people.

Cathy, that's something you engaged with, right? There was a constant challenge for you and you responded to the situation through patient relationship building rather than confrontation or withdrawal.

Can you share a little bit about how you were thinking about this and how you look at all that in hindsight?

I think whenever you provide aid anywhere in the world, planning interventions, properly is the most important first step.

And then you sign contracts with distribution plans, with clear, detailed numbers of beneficiaries, and of course, where the aid is going.

And based on that, you then can do the monitoring.

And also important, I felt, was always never to promise anything that I wasn't sure if I could really follow through.

Another point is that if there are issues, and there are always issues, confrontation doesn't work because then the people withdraw.

But addressing differences in a way that your North Korean partner doesn't lose face, that's the way to try and do it.

And of course, We constantly had to hear that aid was going to the military.

We just had to face that.

And sometimes I felt it was like we had to account for every single sack of rice.

And in some other countries, food was dropped from an airplane in the hope that the right people would get it.

So there were really different ways to look at the situation, and especially a situation in a country like North Korea.

And so in hindsight, do you know that the aid reached the right people? Do you know that the regime did not divert it for military or regime-supporting purposes?

Well, I made so many... trips to North Korea, sometimes four or five times in a year, spending up to a month in North Korea, visiting beneficiary institution or also family visits, and then check and listen what the people had to say.

And I also felt the aid we provided was perhaps not as big as the North Korean would like to have seen the aid packet, but it was big enough for them to say, we have to follow what we agreed upon, otherwise we lose everything.

And I think they knew that.

So we never detected major, major problems.

I think also, you know, building trust is really important and also treat the North Koreans with respect and plan for a long-term engagement and work in partnership.

And then, of course, there are cultural differences, which we also have to think about and work Overall, I would say it was a huge learning process for the North Koreans, but also for us aid agencies, because both of us didn't know much about each other.