Two shipping containers full of hygiene kits languish for weeks in a Chinese port, unable to reach North Korea. They are intended for people with tuberculo
WASHINGTON – Two shipping containers full of hygiene kits languish for weeks in a Chinese port, unable to reach North Korea. They are intended for people with tuberculosis or hepatitis, not to advance nuclear or missile programs, but Chinese customs officers see something objectionable in the cargo: nail clippers.
As sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s regime intensify, the few aid groups operating in North Korea are facing sometimes bewildering economic restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles that could cripple life-saving work. While the U. N. Security Council says the penalties shouldn’t affect humanitarian help, the Trump administration cites even North Korea’s reported food and fuel shortages as evidence of a pressure campaign working.
The nail clippers were part of a consignment sent by Christian Friends of Korea, among the U. S. charities working in North Korea despite escalating nuclear tensions. The latest round of U. N. sanctions bans the supply of metal items, so that explains the clipper holdup.
It is not the only example. The American Friends Services Committee, another aid group, is struggling to deliver agricultural equipment such as threshers, compost makers and shovels.
“Sanctions should not have an impact on the well-being of ordinary citizens,” said Linda Lewis, a member of the Quaker committee that has helped North Korean farmers for two decades. “This work should not be shut down for political reasons.”
How do you pressure governments, short of war, to change their behavior without unduly injuring innocent civilians?
That is one of biggest questions for the economists, foreign policy professionals and political leaders who devise and put in place economic sanctions around the world. U. N. penalties routinely include broad exceptions for most basic civilian goods. Even when the United States targets its most intractable foes, it exempts food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.
In the case of North Korea, which the U. S. and others want to rid of nuclear weapons, it is unclear whether the right balance is being struck.
Citing reports last week from Tokyo of scores of North Korean fishing boats, with dead crews, drifting into Japanese waters, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the sanctions are “really starting to hurt.” The human suffering, he said, was North Korea’s responsibility and an “unavoidable outcome” of its failure to help its own people.
Tillerson also doubted that humanitarian assistance, which South Korea is considering, would reach the right people in the North.
