VZCZCXYZ0000
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUEHUL #0499/01 0730631
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 130631Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY SEOUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 8892
INFO RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING PRIORITY 3955
RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW PRIORITY 8573
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 4099
RUEHUM/AMEMBASSY ULAANBAATAR PRIORITY 1646
RUEHSH/AMCONSUL SHENYANG PRIORITY3608
RHMFISS/COMUSKOREA J5 SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RUACAAA/COMUSKOREA INTEL SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RHMFISS/COMUSFK SEOUL KOR PRIORITY
RHHMUNA/CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI PRIORITY

UNCLAS SEOUL 000499 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KS KN ECON EAID
SUBJECT: SOUTH KOREAN NGOS' UPHILL STRUGGLE IN NORTH KOREA 
 
------- 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1. (SBU) In early March, DPRK officials faxed a request to 
their ROK counterparts at Mt. Kumgang saying that South 
Korean aid workers should "temporarily" halt visits to Mt. 
Kumgang and Kaesong, but noting that aid would still be 
accepted, with no further explanation.  The message 
encapsulated North Korea's attitude toward South Korean NGOs: 
 maximize aid, minimize NGOs' influence, and communicate 
cryptically, a situation that has changed little since the 
2003 publication of "Paved with Good Intentions," edited by 
Scott Snyder and Gordon Flake, about NGOs' early experiences 
in the DPRK. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Nevertheless, many of the 73 ROK NGOs that have 
undertaken to help the North, as well as religious groups 
such as Seoul's Full Gospel Church, which broke ground on a 
USD 20 million cardiac hospital in Pyongyang in December, are 
determined to persevere, motivated by a dogged sense of 
humanitarian or Christian obligation to their fellow Koreans. 
 Representatives of leading South Korean NGOs say that 
patience and hard bargaining have allowed them to gradually 
expand their reach beyond Pyongyang, and beyond food aid to 
agricultural development and operating  cooperative farms (15 
NGOs), and medicine and health (10 NGOs).  It is not clear 
whether ROKG support for such NGO activities, which funded 
about 15 percent of the USD 1 billion worth of aid in 2006, 
will continue in the Lee Myung-bak administration.  End 
Summary. 
 
----------------------- 
PROFILES OF ACTIVE NGOs 
----------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) To get a sense of ROK NGO activities and 
difficulties working in the DPRK, we recently met with 
several of the most active groups. 
 
-- Korean Sharing Movement (KSM) 
 
In 1994, the DPRK announced that it needed food aid, 
confirming reports of severe shortages rumored since 1991, 
according to a representative from the Korean Sharing 
Movement (KSM), which was one of the first ROK NGOs to 
respond.  The immediate humanitarian need was rice and corn, 
which NGOs had to provide indirectly through the South Korean 
Red Cross, due to ROKG restrictions at the time.  When 
President Kim Dae-jung (1998-2002) launched the Sunshine 
Policy, the ROKG took over providing food assistance.  NGOs 
such as KSM turned to improving agricultural production and 
other areas such as medical technology.  As a result, 
emergency and relief aid, which  accounted for 96 percent of 
ROK private aid to the North during 1995-1998, made up only 
37 percent during 2002-2006, replaced by agricultural 
assistance (46 percent) and health/medical assistance (17 
percent).  The DPRK encouraged the shift, seeking 
developmental rather than humanitarian aid since 2005.  KSM, 
one of the most active ROK NGOs, which has served as a de 
facto coordinator for smaller NGOs and local ROK governments 
(such as Gyeonggi Provincial government) active in the North, 
has patiently expanded its operations in terms of number, 
type and location.  The KSM representative said that the 
basic food situation in North Korea had improved enough from 
the mid-1990s famine era that now many NGOs' focus was on 
providing more protein and increasing the North's food 
production capacity through agricultural technology projects. 
 Like the other NGO representatives, the KSM representative 
said that his organization typically sends groups of aid 
workers to the DPRK roughly once or twice each month. 
 
-- Okedongmu ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") 
 
Okedongmu targets mothers and children, providing soymilk and 
school supplies and operating a specialized hospital for 
pregnant women in Pyongyang that opened in 2006.  The NGO 
also established a pediatric section of a hospital in Nampo, 
on the DPRK's east coast, and is building a new pediatric 
wing at the Pyongyang Medical School where rural physicians 
(with abysmal qualifications, according to the 
representative) will be trained.  After trying and failing to 
get permission to train DPRK physicians at Seoul National 
University (SNU), Okedongmu also set up a program to train a 
few physicians in China for six months.  A desired next step 
is to get permission for South Korean physicians to lecture 
to North Korean medical students and personnel in the DPRK; 
only individual ROK physicians have been allowed brief visits 
so far. 
 
-- World Vision Korea 
 
South Korea's World Vision NGO is independent from the 
international NGO, is the only ROK NGO with an office in 
North Korea (Pyongyang), and seems uniquely successful. 
Following Kim Jong-il's 1998 decree that North Koreans should 
pursue potatoes as a main source of food, World Vision Korea 
established a potato-seed research center in Pyongyang, since 
expanding the effort -- to the envy of other NGOs "stuck" in 
Pyongyang -- to five other areas of the country, including 57 
hectares of land for research on potatoes and other 
vegetables.  The NGO also sponsors an annual symposium on 
agriculture in Pyongyang (December 2007 was the most recent 
one) that brings 40 ROK academics to the DPRK, and will train 
five DPRK scientists on seed development technology in China 
this year. 
 
-- Full Gospel Church 
 
Over half of the ROK NGOs working in the DPRK have a 
religious focus, according to the Ministry of Unification, 
though they know from the outset that proselytizing is 
excluded.  Seoul's 750,000-member Full Gospel Church made 
news in December 2007 when it broke ground on a USD 20 
million cardiac hospital in Pyongyang, including a planned 
USD 5 million from the Ministry of Unification's inter-Korean 
funds.  The church sent 250 of its members to Pyongyang on a 
special chartered flight from Seoul for the groundbreaking 
ceremony, and held a joint worship service with a North 
Korean congregation in Pyongyang's Chilgol official 
Protestant Church.  An elder of the Full Gospel Church active 
in the project said that the full cost of the hospital will 
exceed USD 40 million, with discussions of what equipment to 
get and how to pay for it just beginning.  The DPRK wants to 
insist on the latest-model medical equipment, without 
addressing issues such as adequate electricity and water 
supply. 
-- Presbyterian Church of Korea 
 
Another overtly religious effort is that of the Presbyterian 
Church of Korea, a sub-denomination of the Presbyterian 
Church, whose elders' committee paid to rebuild the Bongsoo 
Protestant Church in Pyongyang (the other official church in 
Pyongyang) and has provided disaster relief after recent 
floods in the DPRK.  The organization has also worked on 
agricultural development and disaster relief.  The 
organization's representative said that the group is trying 
to help North Koreans because "it is a sin to ignore their 
sufferings," but she also expressed dismay at having to hand 
over bags of flour to DPRK officials after the 2006 floods, 
without having any way of knowing who would end up with the 
flour.  "We just counted out the bags, got a receipt, and 
then who knows?" she said. 
 
----------------------------- 
DEALING WITH DPRK OFFICIALDOM 
----------------------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) In separate conversations, all of the NGO 
representatives we met with described frustrating efforts to 
reach and keep agreements with their DPRK interlocutors, 
claiming little insight into the DPRK bureaucracy.  Of the 73 
ROK NGOs active in the DPRK (based on required registration 
with the Ministry of Unification), all but one are considered 
"social" organizations and are thus assigned to the National 
Reconciliation Council as their counterpart, while World 
Vision Korea has the relatively good fortune to interact with 
the National Economic Cooperation Federation for the 
"economic" nature of their activities, which has given them 
access to areas off-limits to other South Korean NGOs.  Both 
of those DPRK organizations are formally under the Asia 
Pacific Peace Committee, charged with handling relations with 
South Korea, but now the two bodies act rather autonomously, 
according to the KSM representative.  Meanwhile, the Chosun 
Christian Federation (CCF) handles religious NGOs and the 
Flood Damage Recovery Agency handles foreign NGOs.  Medical 
projects require interaction with the DPRK's Medical 
Association. 
 
¶5. (SBU) KSM's representative said that there was continual 
tension between the NGOs, which wanted to get out of 
Pyongyang and do a wider variety of projects involving more 
contact with North Korean residents, and the DPRK officials, 
who insisted on having most activities in Pyongyang, probably 
because of its hand-picked population, thus limiting the 
interaction with North Koreans.  NGOs sometimes win the 
tug-of-war only by threatening to walk away. 
 
¶6. (SBU) While showing us the pictures of the excavation site 
for USD 20 million hospital that the Full Gospel Church is 
building in Pyongyang, the church's representative said that 
the process was an "unending, long-lasting series of 
negotiations," and that he would have often chosen to give up 
on the effort had it not been for has sense of duty as a 
Christian believer. 
 
¶7. (SBU) The Okedongmu representative noted that shifting to 
hands-on development assistance was a good step for ROK NGOs, 
because NGO workers now get more frequent access to sites. 
She said she developed a close working relationship with a 
Counselor on the National Reconciliation Council, but the 
official, like others, was rotated out of the position after 
18 months.  Even so, local DPRK officials have sometimes 
helped push agreements up the chain of command to get central 
government approval.  She added that her organization had to 
be careful not to make a big deal of DPRK authorities' 
failure to live up to their side of an agreement, such as 
providing a certain amount of material at a certain time, 
because "stronger" DPRK organizations often absconded with 
designated materials or equipment.  DPRK officials are also 
sometimes reluctant to agree to allow NGOs to start projects 
because they see themselves as prone to losing face if the 
projects can't be completed because of shortcomings on the 
DPRK side. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Evidently, perseverance gets results:  the Full 
Gospel Church, after threatening several times to suspend the 
project entirely, eventually reached agreement with its 
counterpart, the Chosun Christian Federation, to reduce the 
floor area of the hospital from 30,000 square meters (m2) to 
20,000 m2, and to include 100 m2 for worship space and 60 m2 
for a pastor's office.  But the resulting contract is 
"tricky."  It is difficult to know whether the hard-fought 
agreements, such as the church's insistence that it have a 
role in the management of the hospital and the selection of 
patients, will hold up in practice.  As evidence of the 
DPRK's real interest in the project, the church was able to 
send 100 truckloads of construction materials overland for 
the first time through Kaesong City in December 2007, 
bringing 2,500 tons of materials to the site; most NGO aid 
shipments still go through the longer sea route.  The 
representative said that he is well aware the agreements with 
the DPRK can go awry, so he has taken 12 three-day trips to 
Kaesong and Pyongyang since taking on the project in 2007, to 
try to keep things on track, and the two sides exchange fax 
messages through Kaesong Industrial Complex every day. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Other veteran NGO representatives also described 
making progress through patience and hard bargaining.  It 
took one and a half years of take-it-or-leave-it insistence 
before Okedongmu got agreement to build a rural center that 
provides soymilk and other protein-rich foods in Kangnam 
County, about 20 miles south of Pyongyang, because the DPRK 
officials feared "ideological contamination" of children 
there, the NGO's representative told us.  The NGO is allowed 
access to the village only once every three months.  She 
explained that UN agencies such as UNICEF and foreign NGOs 
were allowed wider rural access because they were "safe" 
without Korean speakers. 
 
¶10. (SBU) World Vision Korea fared better because in 2001 its 
counterpart became the more development-focused National 
Economic Cooperation Federation, which recognized World 
Vision Korea as contributing to the development of the DPRK 
economy.  With the help of the ROKG Ministry of Agriculture, 
which sent an official along, World Vision was able to do a 
national survey of North Korean agricultural areas before 
deciding where best to locate its potato-seed centers.  The 
DPRK government reacted enthusiastically, seeing World 
Vision's work as a "revolution in agricultural development," 
the representative said.  Notwithstanding its advantageous 
relationship, World Vision "fought for a year" before it was 
allowed to set up a noodle factory in Pyongwon, north of 
Pyongyang near the Sunan International Airport, that feeds 
10,000 people per day.  Later, World Vision was able get DPRK 
government agreement at the county level to set up health 
centers at cooperative farms.  The lesson seems to be that 
NGOs should try to land the National Economic Cooperation 
Federation as their counterpart, but the trend has been in 
the other direction:  after the 2001 floods, which attracted 
help from many new ROK NGOs, the DPRK government assigned all 
but World Vision to the National Reconciliation Council. 
 
---------------------- 
INSIGHT INTO THE DPRK? 
---------------------- 
 
¶11. (SBU) NGO representatives, several of whom travel to 
North Korea multiple times each year, were hesitant to 
generalize about conditions in North Korea, recognizing that 
they were presented with a filtered picture on each visit. 
For example, one western NGO representative who spoke good 
Korean, unbeknownst to his host, said that he overheard a 
rural official and his guide discussing how to answer a basic 
question he had asked about whether a certain area produced 
enough food for the local population. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Representatives doing medical work provided the 
most disturbing reports.  The Okedongmu representative 
visited six hospitals in Pyongyang with physicians from Seoul 
National University, who were shocked at how bad conditions 
were, saying that "no treatment would have been better."  In 
another hospital, technicians had never seen modern X-ray 
equipment so the NGO had to provide basic instruction on 
operating the equipment and reading the film.  Realizing that 
medical personnel there knew very little, the NGO returned 
with basic medical textbooks showing how to spot pneumonia 
and other diseases.  Still, DPRK officials long resisted the 
idea of Okedongmu building a new hospital, agreeing only 
after the ROK Ministries of Unification and Health 
interceded. 
 
¶13. (SBU) The World Vision representative said that a 
Pyongyang hospital his team visited had neither saline 
solution nor intravenous bottles, instead using inverted beer 
bottles filled with water for some patients, adding that the 
method was tested on rabbits beforehand.  A representative 
from Good Friends, another ROK NGO said to have a large 
network of contacts in the DPRK, said that in many rural 
areas doctors spend three days per week searching for herbal 
medicines and treat patients with these remedies on the other 
three days. 
 
¶14. (SBU) As for living standards among the North Koreans 
they saw and interacted with, the Okedongmu representative 
said that conditions were definitely more difficult outside 
of Pyongyang.  It was difficult to know about food 
sufficiency, but a general observation was that coastal and 
farm areas did better.  Hence, her observation was that 
people in urban areas besides Pyongyang (special population 
with the only functioning Public Distribution System for 
food) such as Nampo had a hard time finding enough food.  She 
added that she and her colleagues were most struck by the 
lack of technology and transportation available to most North 
Koreans.  They kept their eyes open for bicycles and dogs in 
villages as signs that people were doing relatively well (a 
method used by anthropologists to gauge the development level 
of a particular area), but they saw few of either, except in 
few areas such as Kaesong, near the Kaesong Industrial 
Complex.  The World Vision representative said that his NGO 
had learned that crop production had declined in recent years 
because of lack of fertilizer and pesticides. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶15. (SBU) Among the NGO representatives we met, there were no 
apologists for the DPRK regime.  Instead, there was abundant 
frustration at the regime and the restrictions it places on 
private South Koreans trying to help fellow Koreans.  Even 
so, we were struck by the doggedness of these individuals, 
who have decided to stick with giving agricultural and 
medical assistance to North Korea even though they know that 
some aid is diverted, that target populations may not be 
those most in need, and that the North Korean bureaucracy 
wants to accept the aid without being polluted by the ROK's 
influence.  This private stream of assistance and contact 
with the North is likely to become a more important element 
in South-North relations this year, since it is not clear how 
much, if any, official assistance the ROKG will provide. 
VERSHBOW