c. 1997 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ The Christian relief organization Mercy Corps International has taken the lead in the global effort to mobilize help for famine-stricken North Korea.

The group played a pivotal role in the Clinton administration’s recent decision to provide 100,000 metric tons of corn to North Korea, more than doubling its previous commitment of emergency food aid.

The food shortage in North Korea reportedly has intensified in recent months with growing death and malnutrition rates among children.

Portland-based Mercy Corps also has won the U.S. Commerce Department license to export medicine to North Korea.

Ellsworth Culver, Mercy Corps senior vice president, has obtained a commitment from the North Koreans to allow 10 to 15 monitors from American voluntary agencies to check on the distribution of emergency supplies in the field.

That was one factor enabling backers of the aid increase to win the bureaucratic battle over critics in the Pentagon and Congress.

Another was North Korea’s agreement to participate in political talks at the United Nations with China, South Korea and the United States on Aug. 5.

Since March, Mercy Corps _ which describes itself as an ecumenical Christian organization _ has been operating an agricultural relief and development project on a cooperative farm in Unpa County, 150 miles south of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.

The area is one of those hit hardest by floods last year and by famine this spring and summer.

The three-year-long Unpa project, which will cost $3.8 million, and the personal relationships formed by Culver during five trips to Pyongyang, have made Mercy Corps the focal point for negotiations between North Korea and U.S. volunteer groups, he said.

“When we go in, we don’t go empty-handed,” said Culver. “We’re not a short-term organization. A number of groups sent food. On my first trip, last July, we started talking about agricultural development, not just emergency relief.”

Culver said his visits helped educate the North Koreans about the value of American nongovernmental organizations. And two conferences he organized, in the United States and in South Korea, helped educate aid agencies about North Korean needs.

Culver led a recent meeting in Washington with four other secular and religious aid agencies _ CARE, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services and Amigos Internacionales _ to work out joint monitoring proposals.

These agreements “have established a whole new level of relationships and response from the United States,” he said.

He noted that the famine in Korea has been years in the making “and will take years to resolve. It has been compounded by two disastrous floods. The agriculture system is just incapable of feeding the nation.”

The latest American contribution came in response to a U.N. appeal for 800,000 tons of food, which “should be sufficient to tide them over two months to the corn harvest in September and the rice harvest in October,” said Culver, an Episcopalian.

But he cautioned that this is just a stopgap measure, and that there will still be people “who are not going to get enough because it is just too little, too late.”

Mercy Corps International has won a name for innovation in the world of humanitarian aid.

A number of its programs seek to create a bridge between the distribution of emergency aid in crises and long-term economic development that stimulates a civil society and the democratic process, from the grassroots upward.

Mercy Corps’ chief executive officer, Neal Keny-Guyer, “is a dynamic, creative guy who is becoming a star, a national figure in our field,” said Mike Kiernan of InterAction, a Washington-based coalition of 150 aid agencies, including Mercy Corps.

Among the innovations, Mercy Corps has tried to bring civil society to Bosnia by bringing together religious groups there.

“Their strength is in the most difficult spots, in countries of conflict,” said Adele Liskov of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “They are very sharp in their design of this link between relief and development.”

Liskov said, “Their other great strength that is impressive is that they work comfortably in partnership with other organizations.”

Mercy Corps began as the Save the Refugees Fund in 1979, the brainchild of Dan O’Neill, who remains its president and is the son-in-law of singer Pat Boone. O’Neill is Roman Catholic.”We call ourselves an ecumenical Christian group that does not evangelize in the normal sense of the word,”said Eleanor Dir, Mercy Corps’ education coordinator.”But we are motivated by Christian values.” Begun as a response to the needs of Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Mercy Corps quickly expanded to other regions and moved beyond emergencies to initiate long-term projects involving agricultural training, special education and small-business development.

The program gets a number of aid grants from U.S. government and U.N. agencies, as well as contributions from foundations and private citizens.

MJP END BERLIN