“Here we go again” doesn’t even begin to capture my thoughts when I read that North Korea has stepped up calls for international food aid.  I groaned again when I read that Washington is considering resuming food aid-which was halted in 2009 because the North Koreans refused U.S. inspections of where the aid was going-a constant problem with aiding the North Koreans. 


There are reports that famine is at its worst in North Korea now and it pains me to hear that.  When I worked in Congress, I followed this issue very closely and met with many brave North Korean defectors who had escaped the torture chambers and concentration camps and served as living testimony to the horrors occurring in that hermit kingdom (horrors so beyond any normal person’s imagination that I lost sleep for months after reading the testimony and became an absolute embarrassment at dinner parties because I couldn’t stop talking about it).


But, if we do this; if the U.S. resumes this food aid, the food will not reach those who need it.  It will be distributed to the political and military elite-who will continue their suicidal drive for nuclear weapons and the destruction of South Korea and possibly Japan.  Most importantly, the people of North Korea will continue to suffer whether or not the U.S. offers aid.


I hope the U.S. refuses North Korea food aid. It’s the humanitarian thing to do.