c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Like North Korea, the country in which he finds himself now living, Erich Weingartner finds himself tugged between hope and distress.

Despite a food crisis that has plagued North Korea and its 23 million people for three years of crop-destroying floods, a severely damaged agricultural and transportation infrastructure and now drought and tidal waves, there is new hope the cycle of hunger may be drawing to an end.”When I arrived in North Korea last June,”Weingartner said,”I saw some of the worst cases of malnutrition I have seen anywhere in the world. In many nurseries and kindergartens I saw rows of emaciated children lying still, and they looked like they wouldn’t survive.” Indeed, many didn’t, although estimates on the number of deaths from the famine are impossible to come by.

But, Weingartner told a news conference at the end of a recent, two-day visit here,”the children are looking better this year.””Things are better for the target groups that the World Food Program has been feeding _ children under the age of 6,”he added.”But the rest of the population is showing extreme stress … People continue to live very much on the edge and the situation could tip back over into famine at any time.” Weingartner’s 13-month sojourn in the generally closed and tightly controlled North Korea makes him among a handful of Westerners with sustained experience in the communist country. He is due to return there after his current furlough for another 12-month stint.

A Canadian Lutheran, Weingartner is on staff at the United Nations World Food Program, the U.N. agency that has taken the lead in coordinating the international community’s response to the immediate food needs of country.

He was named to the job by a consortium of religious and other relief agencies including Church World Service, the aid arm of the National Council of Churches; the Canadian Foodgrains Bank; Mercy Corp International; the evangelical aid and development agency World Vision International; Caritas International, a Roman Catholic aid agency; Action by Churches Together, the World Council of Churches-Lutheran World Federation aid agency; and ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency.”I’m really an NGO (nongovernmental organization) in disguise,”he laughed, noting that he was sent and financed by the NGOs even though he is part of the World Food Program staff.

This isn’t Weingartner’s first experience with North Korea.

His first visit there was in 1985 and he has been responsible for organizing numerous encounters between North and South Korean delegations, including the first meeting of Korean Christian church officials from the North and South, which was held in Switzerland in 1986.

Working out of the capital, Pyongyang, Weingartner serves as the liaison between the North Korean government, the World Food Program and the NGO community, tracking the arrival and distribution of aid from the private sector. He also trains other food monitors.

He has traveled extensively throughout the nation, visiting all but 39 of North Korea’s 210 counties under the ground rules that aid will be distributed only in those places where monitors can observe its distribution.”In the one year, access has increased phenomenally,”he said.”And the international agencies are pressing the government for even more.” For the most part, Weingartner said, he is able to travel freely _ with a government provided driver and translator _ and he is able to visit the countryside as well as individual families.

At the same time, Weingartner and other international workers”live quite isolated from the general population … in a compound behind walls and guards.”But, he added, he has qualified for his Korean drivers license.”I can drive around Pyongyang all by myself.” Weingartner said the food crisis has brought changes to North Korea and its rigidly controlled society.”Despite North Korea’s deep embarrassment at having to accept international donations to survive, this crisis has given the opportunity for the international community to build some bridges to people isolated for some 50 years,”he said.

There are also indications of the development of private markets, indicating some”softening”on the part of the government although”these markets are still hidden from view.” Overall, Weingartner said he sees North Korea”teetering”on the edge of full-fledged famine, with much dependent on the harvest currently about to begin and the response of the international community to the on-going shortfall in food needs.”This is the most serious time,”he added, because the food rationing system designed to stretch between harvests is empty and the new harvest is not yet in.

Even as Weingartner was making his Washington rounds, the North Korean government announced Thursday (July 9) the harvest of spring wheat, barley and potatoes was in trouble.

Weingartner acknowledged people are dying because of the famine but he would not confirm estimates from some relief agencies, based on reports of refugees who have fled to China, that the death toll is in the millions.”I would expect to see major signs”of such a large number of deaths, he said.”None of those signs are present in what we see.” MJP END ANDERSON