朝鲜能否挺过下一次饥荒?

【英文原文】

Handling The Next North Korean Famine
The annual North Korean flower festival, celebrating today's birthday of founder Kim Il Sung, began this week in Pyongyang. Given the theme -- 'President Kim Il Sung, the sun of humankind, is immortal along with the flower of the sun' -- no wonder money is apparently no object. The festival organizing committee supplied tissue culture-bred seedlings to greenhouses around the country to boost the growing of Kimilsungia, a hybrid orchid named after Kim Il Sung. According to the Pyongyang Times, cultivators 'have ensured the right temperature in day and at night and prevented damage from blights . . . despite climate change and the low percentage of sunshine this year.'

What is particularly outrageous about this year's festival is that it comes at the same time that bad weather, compounded by the state's economic mismanagement and ineffective collective farming methods, is causing a failure of the overall agriculture sector. Experts in the United Nations' World Food Program are warning that this year North Koreans may face the worst food shortage since a famine claimed a million lives in the 1990s. Mid-April also happens to be when the so-called choongoong, or spring poverty, season begins. This is when North Korea runs out of the last bits of the previous year's fall harvest but before summer crops can be harvested.

In a still largely command economy, many North Koreans are left without a safety net against starvation. Disastrous monetary 'reform' last November effectively wiped out the savings of many North Koreans, stripping them of purchasing power that could be used to buy food. Hoarding and barter trade are once again prevalent. Periodic crackdowns on private-market activities certainly haven't helped either.

As severe hunger looms, the question for donors is whether to resume food aid to North Korea and, if so, how to ensure the assistance reaches the people most in need and is not diverted to the military. Proper monitoring is essential. Some critics think it would be impossible to monitor food deliveries, as the North Korean government would simply reject such a condition, fearing foreigners would learn too much about the world's most secretive state.

But there is some precedent for meaningful, if not optimal, monitoring of food aid. For instance, the United Nations' World Food Program conducted an average of 388 monitoring visits a month in 2005, and 440 a month in 2004. For much of these two years, U.N. employees had access to 160 of the country's 203 counties and districts. More than half of the World Food Program's international staff, numbering 32 at the end of 2005, were directly engaged in food aid monitoring during the year, and some of them spoke Korean. Such monitoring meant at least some of the young children, the elderly, the disabled, and pregnant and nursing women received food aid.

The North Korean government can hardly afford another period of severe nation-wide hunger. The country's leaders know that at some point a social explosion is possible as people become desperate. During the years of the famine in the 1990s, North Koreans were still so brainwashed by government propaganda that they died in massive numbers at home, waiting for rations that never came, not letting go of their faith in Pyongyang to save them. North Koreans are now better informed about the outside world, and know whom to blame for their hunger. The survivors have learned that it is foolish, even dangerous, to blindly depend on the government to deliver food.

This means renewed massive hunger could pose a risk to the continuity of the North Korean government. As the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, works to ensure another leadership succession to his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, he should consider that North Koreans may not endure another epoch of massive hunger as quietly as they did the last one.

That political imperative may force Pyongyang to act sooner, rather than later. Given that, the foreign-aid community can -- and should -- insist that aid workers be allowed to properly monitor aid distribution according to standard international protocols for transparency and accountability. The North Korean government must also pledge to end discrimination in government distribution of food in favor of ruling party officials, the military, the intelligence services and the police -- and against the 'hostile' classes deemed politically disloyal to the government. Otherwise, most donors will remain reluctant to give food aid to North Korea. And that would be a tragedy, on a truly massive scale.

【中文译文】

上周平壤刚刚庆祝了一年一度的朝鲜太阳节。这个节日是为了庆祝朝鲜开国元勋金日成(Kim Il Sung)生日。这个节日的主题是“人类的太阳金日成主席与太阳花一道永垂不朽”──难怪钱显然不是问题。节日组委会向全国各地的温室提供了通过组织培养方法繁育的种子，以增加“金日成花”(Kimilsungia)的种植，这种杂交兰花以金日成的名字命名。据《平壤时报》(Pyongyang Times)报道，种植者日夜确保适宜的温度，防止病虫害，克服了一年来的气候变化以及较低的日照水平。

今年的“太阳节”最令人气愤的一点是，它正好赶在了整个农业因恶劣天气、经济措施不当以及效率低下的集体农场方式而歉收的时候。联合国世界粮食计划署的专家警告说，朝鲜今年可能面临上世纪90年代导致百万人饿死的饥荒以来最严重的粮食短缺。4月中旬也正好是所谓的春荒季节的开始。春荒是指朝鲜用完了上年的秋粮，然而夏收作物尚未收获的这段时间。

朝鲜仍是以指令性经济为主体的国家，因此许多朝鲜人没有能够抵御饥荒的安全网。去年11月灾难性的货币改革有效的清除了许多朝鲜人的储蓄，剥夺了他们原本可以用来购买食品的购买力。囤积和易货交易再一次盛行。对自由市场活动的定期打压当然也不会有所帮助。

随着严重饥荒的逼近，捐助者面临的问题是：是否重启对朝粮食援助，如果是，如何确保援助能送到最需要的人民手中，而不是被转移给军队。适当的监控必不可少。部分批评人士认为不可能对食品的发放进行监控，因为朝鲜政府将明确拒绝此类条件，害怕外国人对这个世界最隐秘的国家了解得太多。

但在监控食物援助方面有一些有意义的（如果不能称之为最佳的）先例。例如，联合国世界粮食计划署平均一个月进行监控调查的次数在2005年为388次，2004年为440次。两年间，联合国人员到达了朝鲜203个区县中的160个区县。2005年底，联合国世界粮食计划署的国际事务官员共有32人，其中一半以上直接参与了当年的粮食援助监控，部分官员会说朝鲜语。此类监控意味着至少部分儿童、老人、残疾人、孕妇和哺乳期妇女得到了食物援助。

朝鲜政府几乎不能承担另一段严重的全国性饥荒。朝鲜领导人知道，人们变得绝望时社会有可能发生暴乱。上世纪90年代的饥荒岁月中，朝鲜人仍如此地相信政府的宣传，以至于大批民众在家中死去时仍在等待永远不会到来的粮食配给，仍始终相信平壤政府会来救助他们。现在，朝鲜人对外界更为了解，知道谁应该为自己的饥饿负责。幸存者已经知道盲目的依靠政府发放食物是愚蠢的，甚至是危险的。

这意味着再次暴发大规模饥荒将危及朝鲜政府的存亡。在伟大领袖金正日(Kim Jong Il)努力确保把领导权传给他最小的儿子金正云(Kim Jong Un)的时候，他应当考虑一下，朝鲜人或许无法像上一次一样安静地忍受另一段大饥荒。

这种政治需要或许会迫使平壤尽快采取行动，而不是推后行动时间。鉴于此，外国援助团体能够且应当坚持要求当局允许援助人员对救援食品的分配进行适当的监控，这也符合旨在促进透明与问责的国际标准程序。朝鲜政府还必须保证停止其分配食物时的歧视性作法，不得偏向政府官员、军队、情报机构和警察，不得歧视被视为政治上不忠于政府的“敌对”阶级。否则大多数捐助者将仍不愿向朝鲜提供食品援助，而这将造成真正大范围的悲剧。