Charities learn that nail clippers, shovels are North Korean no-nos
WASHINGTON — Two shipping containers full of hygiene kits languish for weeks in a Chinese port, unable to reach North Korea. They’re intended for people with tuberculosis or hepatitis, not to advance nuclear or missile programs, but Chinese customs officers see something objectionable in the cargo: nail clippers.
As sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s government intensify, the few aid groups operating in North Korea are facing sometimes bewildering economic restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles that could cripple life-saving work. While the U.N. Security Council says the penalties shouldn’t affect humanitarian help, the Trump administration cites even North Korea’s reported food and fuel shortages as evidence of a pressure campaign working.
The nail clippers were part of a consignment sent by Christian Friends of Korea, among the U.S. charities working in North Korea despite escalating nuclear tensions. The latest round of U.N. sanctions bans the supply of metal items, so that explains the clipper holdup.
It’s not the only example. The American Friends Services Committee, another aid group, is struggling to deliver agricultural equipment such as threshers, compost makers and shovels.
How do you pressure governments, short of war, to change their behavior without unduly injuring innocent civilians?
That’s one of biggest questions for the economists, foreign policy professionals and political leaders who devise and put in place economic sanctions around the world. U.N. penalties routinely include broad exceptions for most basic civilian goods. Even when the United States targets its most intractable foes, it exempts food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.
In the case of North Korea, which the U.S. and others want to rid of nuclear weapons, it’s unclear whether the right balance is being struck.
Citing reports last week from Tokyo of scores of North Korean fishing boats, with dead crews, drifting into Japanese waters, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the sanctions are “really starting to hurt.” The human suffering, he said, was North Korea’s responsibility and an “unavoidable outcome” of its failure to help its own people.
Tillerson also doubted that humanitarian assistance, which South Korea is considering, would reach the right people in the North.
His remarks alarmed humanitarian advocates. But given that the alternative to the U.S.-led pressure may be military conflict, the Trump administration is getting much leeway from international partners and the public over how the sanctions are affecting North Korea’s 25 million people. Recent visitors to the isolated country say fuel prices have risen, but food supplies don’t seem any scarcer. They anticipate conditions to worsen in the coming months.
Three times in the past year, the U.N. Security Council has tightened economic restrictions on North Korea, cutting fuel supplies and banning trade in the goods that make up 90 percent of the North’s export revenue. The latest round, designed to punish a North Korean long-range missile test, prohibit selling the North iron, steel and other metals. That covers nearly 150 different categories of products, covering everything from stainless steel ingots to spoons and paper clips.