Portrait of the patriot - Part 5

Pak supported the decision -- a subject of internal debates since 2002 -- to terminate the receipt of food aid at the end of 2005. Already in the early days working with the WFP, he learned from his foreign colleagues that food aid always creates dependencies, and is therefore incompatible with Juche. At the UNDP he learned that whereas food aid is useful only as a short-term stopgap in a disaster area, development is an ongoing process that all countries are involved in. Unlike chronic food shortages, which point to policy deficiencies, development is something both normal and honourable, as long as it is self-guided, and not simply imposed from the outside.

He was less content about the decision to terminate the presence of NGOs. Although his own experience with NGOs was not a happy one, he did acknowledge that a number of them imparted useful expertise and novel ideas. Besides, the exit of food aid agencies and NGOs would limit opportunities for travel within his own country -- something he saw as a serendipitous fringe benefit that had altered his own perceptions, and could do so for other young compatriots.

Even this small sacrifice he believed to be worthwhile if there were a genuine commitment to development. And this was indeed the policy his government announced to the United Nations. The key to Korea’s future -- of this Pak Kim Li is convinced -- lies in obtaining all the knowledge the world has to offer, without capitulating to foreign manipulation, without accepting foreign answers to problems only Koreans themselves could understand.

He was happy when early in 2006 he became involved in the drafting of the UNDP’s next comprehensive country programme, a three-year project design that leaned heavily in the direction of “capacity building”, a term he now understood to be synonymous with education.

But would the international community respond with the requisite financing? None of his international colleagues held out much hope. “Not until the nuclear issue is resolved,” they would repeat endlessly. His readings regarding international aid to other parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East had persuaded him that you could always get resources when children are already dying of starvation. But it appeared far more difficult to finance the development needed to prevent starvation.