NEWS STORY: Church Conference Urges Lowered Rhetoric, New Negotiation on Korea Crisis

c. 2003 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ As tensions between the Bush administration and North Korea’s Communist regime continue to escalate, church leaders and policy experts called for a lowering of the confrontational rhetoric and stepped-up negotiations to defuse the crisis. “We need to advance a view not of pre-emptive war, but of diplomatic priorities,” […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ As tensions between the Bush administration and North Korea’s Communist regime continue to escalate, church leaders and policy experts called for a lowering of the confrontational rhetoric and stepped-up negotiations to defuse the crisis.

“We need to advance a view not of pre-emptive war, but of diplomatic priorities,” said the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. “If we want to show shock and awe, we need to show love and justice.”


During a three-day conference that concluded Wednesday (June 18), church leaders, policy experts and Christian delegations from South Korea called for the U.S. government to reconvene the peace talks, which have remained stagnant since the North Korean administration announced its previously clandestine nuclear program last October.

The consultation, sponsored by the NCC and Church World Service, the humanitarian arm of the NCC’s 36 Protestant and Orthodox member denominations, marks the first such meeting since 1997. Citing the militant stances of both governments as an impediment to peace and stability in the region, participants pressed for normalization of relations with North Korea and greater humanitarian assistance to the region.

In exchange for the mending of diplomatic relations and humanitarian aid, North Korea would have to pledge to dismantle its uranium-enrichment program, which violates an agreement it made with the United States in 1994, Edgar and others said.

The crisis reached a new level Thursday as North Korea released a statement asserting the country “would exercise all its rights to avert a war, (and) protect the sovereignty and security of the country” by building a nuclear deterrent force.

Experts at the conference said that far from deterring North Korean hawks, the bellicose rhetoric of the Bush administration has caused them to step up their nuclear program.

“We are at a very dangerous moment,” said Selig Harrison, director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy. “North Korea is showing signs of desperation I’ve never seen before _ for example, by their threat to sell plutonium to third parties.”

Maurice Strong, adviser on Korea issues to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, said the North Koreans would reverse their nuclear ambitions if the United States proposed a peaceful agreement recognizing North Korean sovereignty.


Harrison agreed, but was skeptical the United States _ which has labeled North Korea a part of the “axis of evil” that also includes Iraq and Iran _ would pursue a peaceful policy.

“We can get a settlement if we want one,” Harrison said. “The question is whether the U.S. government wants it or just wants an excuse for regime change.”

Meanwhile, experts said the growing tensions between the United States and the communist leadership in North Korea have disrupted the flow of humanitarian food aid to an increasingly desperate population. Due to chronic droughts and floods that crippled agricultural production and the disastrous effects of collective farming efforts, North Korea has been ravaged by famine since the mid-1990s. An estimated 2 million people starved to death during the height of the famine between 1996 and 2000.

Church World Service, which has provided over $4 million in humanitarian aid since the start of the famine, sent a shipment of nearly 1.5 million pounds of fortified flour to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, earlier this year. But according to the World Food Program, North Korea will need about 2 million metric tons of grain from external sources in 2003 to avoid another food crisis.

“The situation this year is certainly grave given that the international community will be able to bring at most 250,000 metric tons, leaving the country short by 1.75 million metric tons,” Victor Hsu of CWS, who monitored the delivery of the flour in April, said in a press release.

“The Koreans kept asking me, `When is the next shipment?’ They are in need of all sorts of aid, whether it’s food or medicine. The need is massive,” Hsu said.


Korean American churches have also joined the efforts to fight famine. For the last two years, a coalition of 400 Korean churches in the United States has provided two metric tons of wheat flour to schools and orphanages every day, Insink Kim, an official in charge of East Asia and Pacific affairs for the Presbyterian Church (USA), said at the conference.

Despite the daily efforts of religious organizations, thousands of North Koreans continue to go hungry, said Kim, who described how his own relatives starved to death several years ago.

“All these years, I’ve tried to do fund-raising for food aid programs to North Korea, and my own family died of hunger,” he said.

DEA END ALTER

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