Asia’s Other Crisis

But these actions would only be a bandage: without fertilizer, North Korea's next harvest is likely to shrink further, carrying the crisis into 2009.

North Korea's food problem, now in its second decade, presents a difficult set of choices. The ruthlessness of the regime and the numbing repetitiveness of its food shortages make it difficult to mobilize assistance. Some have even argued that Washington should offer nothing until the North comes clean on its nuclear programs.

The long-run solution is to revitalize North Korea's industrial economy, which would give it the export earnings to import grain. This solution presupposes progress on the nuclear issue. But in the short run, absent vigorous action by South Korea, China and Japan—the three countries capable of delivering help fast—hunger will likely claim innocent victims once more.

Haggard and Noland are coauthors of “Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid and Reform.”

© 2008