NORTHEAST ASIA PEACE AND SECURITY NETWORK ***** SPECIAL REPORT ***** March 4, 1998 The following is a Special Report prepared by the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement on the Field Research on North Korean Refugees Interviewed in China. A news conference on the research findings was held on Wednesday, February 25, at 1:00 p.m., in the US Capitol, Room HC-6. The survey findings are available at: http://blue.nownuri.net/~kbsm or http://www.chollian.net/~nat000 An article based on the survey will appear in the upcoming quarterly issue of "The Hunger Notes." Further information about the survey can be obtained from: 101-12, Gye-dong, Chongno-gu, Seoul 110-270, South Korea Tel : 82-2-3672-5373 Fax : 82-2-3672-5374 E-mail: jennyp@nuri.net Cynthia Ahn, Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement - NY Office, 212- 759-2014, or kasm_dc@msn.com ------------------------- "Famine Witnessed by 472 North Korean Refugees Interviewed in China: Refugees estimate the North Korean death rate to be about 29 percent in the last two years" Background About 500 DPR Korean refugees interviewed in Chinese border villages estimated a death rate of 29 percent during the last two years of famine in North Korea. The data in the largest survey yet of North Korean refugees in China conducted by the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement provide the most comprehensive and uncensored picture of the course of the North Korean famine to which the outside world has yet had access. Four-hundred-seventy-two refugee respondents provided information about their immediate family members, totaling 2,583 persons, including grandparents, parents, and unmarried children; 231 hometowns, and the nation. First, the survey findings include death rates by gender, age, and household since August, 1995, the time North Korea was swept by the worst floods in its history. Mortality rates among children and the elderly, the primary victims of famine, are elaborated with the attributed causes for their death, including epidemic disease and malnutrition. The survey of refugee respondents also reveals the death rates of over 200 urban districts of their hometowns with populations of 100-150. Second, the surveyed population reveals various coping mechanisms that North Koreans are desperately using in the third year of famine. Third, the survey findings include a graphic presentation of population movements of North Koreans at famine risk. "Despite the agricultural harvest from October 1997 and ongoing international food assistance, the North Korean famine continues to claim a large number of victims - particularly both in the tightly controlled north province of Jagang, which borders the mountainous Chinese side, and in the city of Hamhung in South Hamyung province - though the causes and number of deaths appear to be changing," according to Pomnhyun, a Buddhist monk who supervised the surveys from October 1 of 1997 to January 31 of this year. He has recently returned from his 11th visit to Chinese border villages with North Korean refugees. The ethnographic field interviews were administered by 23 Korean- speaking Korean-Chinese associates of the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement, a leading Buddhist NGO in the Republic of Korea. The interviews were voluntary with strict assurance of confidentiality of the respondent's identity. Venerable Pomnyun, executive director of the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement in South Korea, updated on the North Korean Famine with the findings based on the in-depth comprehensive interviews with 472 North Korean refugees who crossed the Chinese border to flee the famine in their hometowns. Young Chun, a survey methodologist researching at the University of Maryland, provided theoretical and methodological guidelines to analyze the findings from the largest in-depth survey interviews yet of North Korean refugees. The field survey research findings summarized here are endorsed by the leading South Korean NGOs, which have altogether sent over 100,000 tons of food aid in the last year alone to North Korea, including the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement, Korean Sharing Movement, The One Heart and One Body Movement (a leading Catholic NGO), Korea Evangelical Fellowship (a leading Protestant NGO), National Campaign to Support Northern Brethren, Women Making Peace, and Won Buddhism. Pomnyun, Executive Director of the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement, an international NGO working to free the world from hunger, disease, and illiteracy, has built schools and hospitals for the Untouchables in India, and has developed programs to look after about 10,000 children in nurseries and kindergartens in the Rajin-Sunbong Free Trade Zones of North Korea. As a President of the Buddhist Academy of Ecological Awakening, Venerable Pomnyun also runs environmental programs in South Korea. Venerable Pomnyun is Co-Executive Director of the Korean Sharing Movement, a leading South Korean NGO working in North Korea. Young Chun, a sociologist and survey research methodologist, has written numerous articles about public opinion, survey methodology, and persuasion which have appeared in Business Survey Methods (published by Wiley & Sons), and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, among other professional journals in the past 10 years. Chun has previously worked at the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan. His current research focuses on public opinion in North Korea, including papers on "Survey Methodology Cues in North Korea" and "Understanding and Measuring Public Opinion in North Korea." Chun has been a member since 1987 of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, World Association for Public Opinion Research, American sociological Association, and International Association of Mass Communication Studies. Executive Summary of the Study Despite the agricultural harvest from October 1997 and ongoing international food assistance, the North Korean famine continues to claim a large number of victims -- particularly in the city of Hamhung in S. Hamkyung and Chagang, which borders the mountainous Chinese side -- though the causes and number of deaths appear to be changing. This data, combined with an earlier survey done last fall, provides the most comprehensive and uncensored picture of the course of the North Korean famine to which the outside world has yet had access. 1. The proportion of death appears to be 29 percent during more than 2 years from Aug 95 to Jan 98 in the surveyed population 2. The heaviest death rates are among children between 0-6 years old at 45 percent and elderly people above 60 at 74 percent. These two age categories also experienced the heaviest mortality rates in the first survey, although the child death rate has risen sharply. The elderly die as they yield their ration portions to their grandchildren to protect their next generations. The young children die as they do not have soft food. 3. Population movements are taking place out of the large cities of the Northeast to rural areas where they have a better opportunity to find wild famine foods, and to China where they can seek help from relatives, according to interviews with refugees. Most of the professions of people surveyed are common in urban areas and uncommon in rural areas: only 4 percent of the refugees surveyed are farmers. Population movements generally take place on a large scale as a famine increases in severity and people are unable to cope with their hunger by any other means. These population movements are accompanied by very high death rates of people already debilitated by hunger moving in very cold weather on foot. 4. The latest survey shows epidemic levels of communicable disease are taking as many lives as starvation. This is also a common consequence of famine, where people's ability to resist disease outbreaks diminishes because the body's immune system collapses as a result of severe malnutrition. People die of disease before they starve to death. The increase in disease may also be attributable to extremely cold temperatures (20 degrees below zero Celsius) in the Northeast region and in China in the winter months. Many of these diseases are directly attributable to inadequate water supply or contaminated water. 5. The survey provides detailed information on the coping mechanisms people are using to survive, mechanisms which are commonly found in most famines. These include scavenging wild foods, sale of household furniture and house, stealing, begging and getting help from relatives. 6. The survey indicates that sufficient food has not made it into the cities of the northeastern provinces whether through domestic sources of production or the humanitarian relief effort. International aid organizations such as the World Food Program have been alarmed by how early in the agricultural year that food stocks appear to be running out in the public warehouses across the country. This survey provides evidence to support this alarming development. Therefore, we believe that the international community should be taking the following immediate actions: 1. Donor governments should increase their pledges to the UN food aid appeal immediately and ship their food and more quickly. 2. Proportionately more food should be moved into the urban areas of the Northeast and Southeastern provinces, especially Chagang province and Hamhung city. 3. More food monitors are needed with greater unrestricted access to those at greatest risk to ensure that food gets to the two population groups dying at the highest rates -- children and the elderly in urban areas. 4. More programmatic attention should be given by UN agencies, particularly UNICEF, the Red Cross and non-governmental organizations, to prevent the spread of epidemic levels of disease through public health measures to get public water and sewerage systems functioning again along with mass immunization campaigns. 5. And the United Nations, in cooperation with the Chinese government, should immediately conduct an extensive survey of the increasing refugee crisis along the Chinese border. If more food is moved into the northeastern cities immediately, the refugee movements into China will decrease because people are leaving North Korea because they have no food. 6. The USA should lift its economic sanctions immediately. This deadly famine in North Korea provides graphic proof of the fact that sanctions primarily kill innocent, powerless civilians. It is past time for the United States to take the leadership in eliminating this cruel form of warfare against innocent children, elderly, pregnant women, patients, and disabled. 7. Finally, unless the North Korean government implements this year major reforms in the agricultural system, this terrible tragedy will continue to repeat itself each year.