As North Korea continues to send signals that it’s paranoid about COVID-19 devastating the country, the United Nations has agreed to expedite its approval process for any foreign aid directed towards the country.
On Tuesday, Kelly Craft — an American ambassador to the United Nations — announced that the U.N. adopted a U.S. proposal to make sanctions exemptions “easier and faster” so that aid groups can help North Korea in a more timely manner. Normally, groups must apply for an exemption to send goods to the DPRK on humanitarian grounds, and the U.N. Security Council then reviews those applications.
“Pleased to see the U.N. 1718 Committee adopt a U.S. proposal making it easier and faster for humanitarian organizations to deliver urgent aid to the North Korean people,” Craft said in a tweet on Tuesday morning. “We’re committed to finding innovative ways for humanitarian groups to continue their life-saving work in DPRK.”
However, humanitarian groups told NK News that domestic regulations in the U.S. and South Korean are the real problem slowing down their aid projects — not the U.N. exemptions approval process. In both countries, a government body also takes time to approve any aid deliveries, regardless of what the U.N. says.
“It’s great news,” said Kim Han-shin, head of the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Research Center (IKECRC). “But it seems the announcement serves more as the U.S. message to North Korea that Washington is trying to manage relations with the North.”’
“We appreciate that the U.S. government is paying increasing attention to this issue,” agreed Daniel Jasper, Public Education and Advocacy Coordinator for Asia at the American Friends Service Committee (ASFC). “[But] we also hope now the U.S. will amend its own national regulations which, in many ways, have been more problematic for the timely delivery of aid than U.N. regulations.”
DOMESTIC RED TAPE
According to several media reports, the U.N. has now extended the sanctions exemption period from the usual six months to nine months, meaning that aid groups automatically get three more months to gather and deliver goods.
The U.N. committee will now also be required to handle urgent requests under a more “expedited timeline,” though it’s not clear how long they’ll take.
“U.N. approval is usually quick, anyways,” Kim of the IKECRC said. His organization received exemptions to send COVID-19 test kits and African Swine Fever aid to North Korea this year.
“It only took two days last time for us to get the U.N. exemption, but it took six whole months until we finally got to the U.N. because of domestic reviews,” he said.
South Korean aid groups have to jump through multiple hoops to get their aid approved. They need the green light from the unification ministry, foreign ministry, ROK Mission to the U.N., as well as the Ministry of Commerce before even approaching the U.N. Sanctions Committee with an application.
“It takes too long here,” Kim said. “And I saw that the bureaucrats lack the willingness to process things quickly … But some aid is time-sensitive, you know?”
Much of the humanitarian community is concerned about North Korea right now — this year, the country faced destructive floods, three back-to-back typhoons and economic hardships over COVID-19-related border closures.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) told NK News that it believes the fast-track approval process was established with COVID-19 in mind.
So far, North Korea has routinely claimed that it has no cases of the virus confirmed in the country, but it reported more than 6,000 of “suspected” cases to the World Health Organization as of late October.
As North Korea continues to send signals that it’s paranoid about COVID-19 devastating the country, the United Nations has agreed to expedite its approval process for any foreign aid directed towards the country.
On Tuesday, Kelly Craft — an American ambassador to the United Nations — announced that the U.N. adopted a U.S. proposal to make sanctions exemptions “easier and faster” so that aid groups can help North Korea in a more timely manner. Normally, groups must apply for an exemption to send goods to the DPRK on humanitarian grounds, and the U.N. Security Council then reviews those applications.
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Jeongmin Kim is the Lead Correspondent at NK News and Editorial Director at KOREA PRO, based in Seoul. Kim covers inter-Korean relations and North and South Korean foreign and military affairs. Kim has covered the 2022 ROK presidential election on the ground, and prior to joining NK News, she worked for the CSIS Korea Chair in Washington D.C. and Reuters news agency’s Seoul bureau.