by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
As winter approaches, people all over the world are looking forward to the donations of food from more prosperous nations to keep them alive. Millions of people across the globe depend on these donations to survive the harsh winter months. But this year, millions of North Koreans will be left without the food they expected.
The two biggest donors of food to North Korea are the United States and South Korea, and are planning to donate as much as usual. It is the third largest donor, Japan, who has decided to halt aid.
The decision in Japan comes after news that Japanese citizens were kidnapped by the North Koreans as part of a spy-training program. Relations between the two nations have been souring on a number of other fronts as well in recent years.
North Korea has long been an enemy of the United States and its allies, including Japan and South Korea. Run as a pitiless Stalinist nation, it has one of the worst human rights records in the world and aggravates its neighbors. Recent crop shortages and terrible economic planning hurt the small nation more and more every year.
Compared to other East Asian nations around it, North Korea is pitifully underdeveloped. Seen from space at night, North Korea is the dark blotch between South Korea and the Chinese mainland - few there have access to electricity or even running water.
Despite the decades of separation and animosity between the North and South Koreans, South Korea continues to do what it can to support the North Korean population. So has the United States, a nation that also happens to be the world's largest benefactor of other nations.
Despite the U.S. president having linked North Korea into the "axis of evil" for its continuing attempts to secure weapons of mass destruction, its support of terrorism and its continuing acts of malice toward the United States and its allies, a substantial portion of the North Korean population is dependent on food from the United States to keep them alive.
Few other nations in history donated food so generously to a sworn enemy. The United States does it all the time, sending aid to many developing nations that have repaid the donations with hatred and terrorism.
Sending food to the hungry around the world is certainly a noble undertaking, but should the United States continue to reward its enemies with aid? Should aggressive nations be supported just as fully as friendly ones? What bitter irony it is, that the people who may one day launch new and deadly terror attacks on the United States were raised on food from our table.
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Although U.S. foreign aid is mainly intended to be humanitarian, its ability to influence foreign powers should not be ignored. Although Japan's denial of food to North Korea may seem extreme, can the Japanese be blamed for their anger? It is not unreasonable to ask that those who subsist on charity treat their benefactors with more respect. Unfriendly nations should keep in mind where their food comes from before going out of their way to anger everyone.
