Hit by floods, North Korea is doing what it does best — asking the South for aid:
North Korea wants rice and materials to repair flood damage such as cement and heavy equipment from South Korea, it was said in a message Saturday. The Unification Ministry on Tuesday said the message came from the North Korean Red Cross and was sent to its South Korean counterpart after the South offered some W10 billion in flood relief (US$1=W1,179).
The North asked for rice, cement, vehicles and bulldozers if the South is willing to help. The message was a belated response to the South Korean Red Cross’s offer on Aug. 26 of emergency food supplies and medicines.
But Seoul is less keen to provide rice and building materials since such aid has been put on hold as part of sanctions after the North sank the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan since the North has a history of diverting such aid to the military. Heavy equipment, cement and iron bars proved controversial when the South gave flood aid to the North in 2006 and 2007.
The Lee Myung-bak government — which has been under pressure to resume rice aid to the North, both as a humanitarian measure and as a means to reduce rice surpluses that are killing rice prices — is reportedly leaning towards agreeing to the North’s request.
Hell, I suppose North Korean sub crews need to eat, too.
On a positive note, at least the North will release the crew of the South Korean fishing boat Daeseung-ho.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Heard an interesting story from a Korean colleague on how the Norks sent rice to the South after a flood in 1985 or thereabouts. Her family got a bag of rice, which they soon found out was pretty substandard so the people in the area only made ddeok out of it. Still, a gift it was.
As a rationale for providing rice to the NORKS, the idea that doing so will somehow relieve downward pressure on rice prices resulting from an excess of supply relative to market demand seems amazingly stupid to me. ROKGOV can buy some % of the rice crop at some non-market price modulated to prop up the “market” price, regardless whether or not it then decides to pay it iver in tribute to KJI. Am I missing something?
@Sperwer
Good question.
I’m guessing they’d have to buy tons and tons of the stuff to really affect the market, in which case there’s the question of what the heck to do with all that rice. They could process it into something else, but that would just crash some other market. Better to give it away and be done with it once and for all.
Or, does the goverment just buy the rice on paper and have the farmers agree to let it rot in the fields?
This post reminds me of what Roboseyo once said in his blog… and I paraphrase… The North Koreans are kinda like that crazy underachieving cousin we all have. The one that asks to “borrow” a few bucks but always finds a way to insult your wife and your kids every time he visits. But he’s still family so you open up your wallet.
I’d say just be sure to give that stupid cousin a few twenties rather than a few hundreds.
Maybe they could mix it with all that “cheese” in warehouses in Wisconsin, the corn in USGOV warehouses all over the midwest and the milk stockpiled in Scandanavia and see if the resulting reaction generates usable energy?
Cement and heavy equipment is definitely NOT needed!!!!
Why give cement and heavy equipment to a country that uses it to try to destroy the very country which gives it to them.
One way of getting rid of the KIM’s is to let their regime collapse and allow the people to revolt against the system.
Giving that kind of stuff is just going to keep them afloat, whilst KJI has millions stored in his Chinese and European bank accounts to buy every family in NK a bag of rice.
Particularly since the cousin is mentally unstable and has recently gotten himself a very big gun.
It just plain pisses me off. It’s your brother who is in danger of being absorbed into China who will just swallow it whole without a word of thanks, and following that will claim the South in its wishy washy border dispute saying we have a lot of Korean Chinese in China anyway, we now also have North Korea, so South Korea is really part of China too.
If the market is too swamped with rice why not buy it and sent it to a needy country whose government is more deserving?
I think no matter how corrupt the government, if you send rice some will get filtered down to these people . Or, to put it another way, the increase in the number of dog-hungry people who to cross the Chinese border to look for tree bark at the risk of getting shot by the Chinese who patrol the border with dogs, is inversely correlated to how many tons of useless rice we send them after a disaster. No excuse. No stupid joke with cousins.
There is no excuse for not sending them rice.
who have to FFS. I hate correcting myself, but if I didn’t people will complain to Robert that his posters cannot speak English.
Lemme see… crazy cousin with a gun begging for a few bucks.
Quite an understatement.
You realize that this crazy cousin has murdered. And murdered. And murdered. And will murder again.
Fool me
twicethrice…“…so South Korea is really part of China too.”
I suppose if you ask them, yes.
The normal order of business, with harvests and with aid, is that the army takes the rice, and the less desirable grains go to civilians.
Yes. Korean govt can no longer prop up the market price of rice as much as they want to because they signed onto the Uruguay Round, which sharply curtails the govt’s ability to do so. Also, even if Korean govt purchases as much as it is allowed under Uruguay Round, they are literally running out of silos to store all the rice.
So why is Homeplus still trying to fuck me in the ass everytime I go to buy a bag of rice? I. Don’t get it. At all.
I just don’t see how you can justify giving the rice no matter the underlying reasons after the incidents they’ve pulled. So the sanctions mean nothing? The lives lost mean nothing?
Stop enabling them and eventually that regime will crumble. Then it would be a fine time to help not before when they’re murdering your people.
Oh what happened to that American English teacher? Has he been returned yet?
Yeah, I figured that was the case, but didn’t want to check myself. But it still doesn’t speak to the issue – which is how to reduce the negative effect on the farmers of overproduction. Simply giving rice to the NORKS won’t really assist with that if the farmers are not compensated for the gift rice; otherwise they are just out the costs of production and are forced to disproportionately bear the cost of a national public policy. The only sensible solution to overproduction/falling prices is the reduction of supply at the source, not its diversion post-production
“So why is Homeplus still trying to fuck me in the ass everytime I go to buy a bag of rice? I. Don’t get it. At all.”
Same thing happens back home when you buy potatoes. They don’t stockpile them in order to fix the prices, though. Farmers dig deep holes in their fields and bury their surplus. If you know a farmer well, he’ll sell you a 50lbs bag of potatoes for the price of the bag.
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