‘Koreans want
to help Koreans’
with food aid
Isle Koreans have raised $30,000
By Susan Kreifels
to feed North Korea, but one scholar
is wary of assisting a country
with nuclear might
Star-BulletinDuk Hee Murabayashi sees photos of starving children in North Korea, and she worries they could be her relatives. She wants to help the more than 5 million North Koreans threatened by starvation this summer. At the same time, Murabaya-shi fears the regime there might divert food and other aid to its military -- the same troops who could one day invade and destroy her homeland in the south.
Hawaii's Korean community is torn about sending aid to the north. But the hearts of many have won out. They have raised close to $30,000 since April. Their target is $50,000.
"Koreans want to help Koreans," said Murabayashi, community liaison at the University of Hawaii's Center for Korean Studies. "The question is whether the food is really reaching the people. The biggest worry is that it will go to the military. It's very unsettling."
Korean fund-raisers here are trusting the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to make sure the aid goes where it's intended: starving North Koreans. The International Red Cross has worked with the North Korean chapter since September 1995.
By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Chung Lee, left, stands with Yong-ho Choe at the
Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaii.
The Korean community works through the Hawaii State Chapter of the American Red Cross. "This is strictly a humanitarian cause," Murabayashi said. "We're trusting the Red Cross."Local fund-raisers have targeted Hawaii's Korean community. The biggest single donation was $10,000 from a Korean doctor who wanted to remain anonymous.
Community leaders estimate 35,000 to 40,000 Koreans live in Hawaii, although the 1990 state census counts only 20,000.
Murabayashi said about half are recent immigrants and the others are second- and third-generation Koreans.
Two years of devastating floods and a steady, chronic decline in North Korea's economy are threatening widespread famine there. United Nations agencies say North Korea needs about 800,000 tons of food aid before its October harvest to avert a famine. At least one-third of its children under age 6 are suffering from malnutrition.
Red Cross negotiators from rivals North Korea and South Korea recently held talks on emergency food shipments from the south: about 50,000 tons of food, as well as medicine, farm machines, fertilizer and clothing.
Aid has become an even more complicated issue because of recently heightened political sensitivity between the two Koreas.
The highest-ranking North Korean official to ever defect said earlier this month that the north was prepared for war against South Korea, and that it was confident it could win with an all-out missile attack against Seoul. Some analysts, however, believe Hwang Jang Yop, 74, who defected last February, could have been planted by North Korean leaders.
The defector also said North Korea's agreement to attend formal peace talks next month is a tactic to obtain emergency food aid.
The Clinton administration announced this month that it would roughly double a previous U.S. donation of food aid to North Korea, providing an additional 100,000 tons of grain worth $27 million. U.S. officials publicly denied any connection between the aid and peace talks.
Chung H. Lee, director of UH's Center for Korean Studies, said although Americans' generosity was to be commended, any link between food aid and North Korean military strength deserves careful scrutiny.
Lee, an American citizen who moved here from South Korea in 1958, believes the majority of South Koreans oppose aid on a massive scale.
"Let's suppose during World War II many Japanese or German children were starving to death and good-hearted Americans sent aid to Germany and Japan," Lee said. "What would the average American say about that?
"Americans have to realize that war on the Korean Peninsula will be total war with nuclear weapons and mass-scale destruction. We'll have to get involved."
The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice. The two sides have never signed a formal peace treaty, and the area outside the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea is one of the most heavily fortified areas in the world.
The zone is a 2.5-mile-wide buffer that stretches the width of the Korean Peninsula roughly along the 38th parallel, where fighting stopped during the war.
The south maintains 650,000 troops and the north an estimated 1 million. The United States stations 37,000 troops in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty that commits them to protect the south in case of attack.
"Many of us here are making decisions in the absence of clear information," Lee said about the secrecy of reclusive North Korea.
If Koreans in the north and south don't know much about each other, they still carry the same blood. Yong-ho Choe, a history professor at the Center for Korean Studies, has been in Hawaii since 1970 but kept his South Korean citizenship. He served on the fund-raising committee.
"It's a complicated issue," Choe said. "We discussed whether this (fund raising) was a good idea."
In the end, kinship won out.
"North Korean people after all are the same Koreans," Choe said.
"In many ways they are innocent victims of a very harsh regime. . . Considering the Hawaii economy, the response was quite good."
