The Internet Campaign to Help North Korean Flood Victims


CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR FRONT PAGE STORY ABOUT OUR CAMPAIGN


HD    American Tries to Fend Off Starvation in North Korea
      Long-time journalist helps a cloistered, communist country
BY  * Cameron W. Barr, Staff writer of The Christian Science
      Monitor
WC    532 Words
CC    4067 Characters
PD    06/05/96
SN  * Christian Science Monitor
SC    CHSM
ED    ALL 06/05/96
PG    1
CY    (Copyright 1996)
LP      Late last year an expatriate American journalist named Bernard
   * Krisher heard how the United States planned to respond to reports
     of a food crisis in North Korea: A contribution of $25,000 - less
     than the cost of, say, a Lexus.
        "It made me think that North Korea really has no friends," he
   * says. So Mr. Krisher decided he would be a friend to North Korea, a
     nation notorious for its xenophobia, a suspicious nuclear-energy
     program, and an authoritarian, Communist government. It is also a
     country that the rest of the world has all but forsaken.
TD *    Krisher says he hasn't forever left journalism, a career in
     which he spent decades as a Tokyo-based correspondent for Newsweek
     and other publications. But "all my life as a journalist I was an
     observer," he says. "And very often when I was in front of someone
     {in an interview} ... I would think to myself, 'I could do better.'
     "
   *    Krisher now devotes much of his time to projects in Cambodia and
     in North Korea. This year he has delivered to North Korea two
     shipments of rice and other goods, worth approximately $100,000,
     and plans a third trip this summer.
        He has raised money for aid to North Korea by appealing for help
     on the Internet through a Web site he created last December. He
     launched the Internet effort, he says, because "you have a natural
     calamity where people are not receiving the kind of aid and support
     that people in other countries would receive under similar
     circumstances."
   *    To underscore this point, Krisher cites a May 13 report by the
     United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and the World
     Food Programme. The report notes that North Korea's capacity to
     produce enough rice and other grains for its 23 million people was
     already under strain before floods and other adverse weather
     worsened the situation in 1994 and 1995.
        "As there are no further {food aid} pledges in the pipeline from
     May onwards," the report says, "the food supply situation is
     becoming increasingly desperate."
   *    A North Korean official wrote to Krisher, in a letter available
     on the home page, "{W}e cannot deny that we face a very severe food
     shortage in the coming months, until this year's harvest, if a
     large amount of rice is not imported. Our need is only  rice."
        In the late 1980s, after becoming acquainted with Cambodia's
   * King Norodom Sihanouk, Krisher wanted to do something to help in
     the reconstruction of that troubled nation. He founded an
     organization called Japan Relief for Cambodia that encourages
     individuals and corporations to help the country, usually insisting
     on donations of goods and services rather than money.
        There is some connection between the two countries: King
     Sihanouk has long had close ties with North Korea's leaders.
        Indeed, a South Korean government official cites that connection
   * in suggesting that Krisher "has a personal bias in favor of North
     Korea." The official says that his government has no objection to
   * Krisher's activities. (See story above.)
   *    Krisher tends to duck questions about the politics of North
     Korea, preferring to address the humanitarian issues. "I'm finally
     living out my Walter Mitty, Don Quixote dream of testing out what
     could be done," he says.
ART  PHOTOS: (PAGE ONE) A QUEUE FOR HANDOUTS: North Koreans
     in Unpa County wait for distribution of food May 26 by the
     International Federation of the Red Cross. The aid group has appealed
     for $5.25 million in food  to avoid a famine in the isolated
     Communist country., RED CROSS FEDERATION/REUTERS 2) FOOD FOR NORTH
   * KOREA: American Bernard Krisher stands beside a food shipment  in one
     of the world's last Communist countries. He has started a campaign to
     help feed the country, which the UN claims is near starvation.,
   * JOSEPH KRISHER


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