Is North Korea Trying To Pull A ‘Fast One’ With Request For Humanitarian Aid Over Floods?


The recent reports of North Korea floods shows that the secretive country is asking for humanitarian aid from a world it has violently threatened, intimidated, and continues to reject as the enemy, as a recent report by Inquisitr shows.

Streets of Pyongyang flood in February 2016. [Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Images]

In that report about the North Korea floods, the skepticism of the government’s claims of there being a crisis is mentioned, where it refers to another article from 2007, which was published on the highly-acclaimed One Free Korea blog, which made a good case for why there’s a reason to believe the reports coming from North Korea state media are mixed up with half-truths.

First off, it pointed out that the fact that state-controlled media is the source of the reporting on the floods, which is already under question, along with their claims that the flood caused the greatest devastation since World War II.

One can make the comparison of North Korean state media with a certain figure in the American election cycle, where these claims are over-exaggerated.

While it’s said that humanitarian aid in North Korea goes into a “black hole,” there is no doubt that DPRK red cross delivers it under the conditions that they can see where it goes, perhaps within reason under Kim Kong Un’s rule. Here is a Red Cross worker after a flood in 2012. [Photo by Kim Kwang Hyon/AP Images]

Unfortunately, mainstream media sources — at least online — are covering the incident as if it were mobilizing immediate emergency aid to the area, which is mostly driven by the United Nations.

And as mentioned in the Inquisitr article referred to earlier, there’s no way the United Nations can independently confirm the specified aid requirements when the nation’s government won’t allow them to evaluate the destruction, or become a known presence in the country to hand it out.

One article by PIIE talked about the exceptions made for humanitarian aid in sanctions, especially with sanctions that are designed to cripple the state, which the United States claims they’re doing to North Korea; and that aid relief should take priority over politics.

Voice of America reports that Pyongyang has mobilized North Korean troops to assist the flood victims, opening roads and distributing materials.

But the article in the mentioned One Free Korea also suggests that the aid delivered to the country just ends up going into the state to distribute, no doubt so that they can control that distribution.

Relief Web gives more details on this system of distribution.

“The DPRK Red Cross has mobilized search and rescue, as well as first aid teams, and released 2,500 household kits (tarpaulins, Jerry cans, water purification tables, blankets etc). A government-led joint assessment mission, with the participation of UN Agencies and international partners based in-country, has been initiated, which is also carrying immediate relief materials from stockpiles, especially food, medicines, water purifying tablets.”

Even more details on aid to the victims of the North Korea floods are provided in the UN News Centre.

Other reports of the same Typhoon Lionrock that is to blame for the floods in North Korea, was reported by Xinhua, via the Belarus News Agency, to hit China, causing 46,000 people to be displaced.

If the international community were to add this assistance with what has been provided for the other floods in North Korea that have been reported on in the past, it is difficult to imagine if there could be some changes in the regime to allow relations to develop with other countries.

Of course, there is the other view that the aggressive nation knows how to play their cards right, and are able to get aid whenever they want and under the regime’s conditions.

It should also be pointed out that the possible exaggeration of the reports by the regime on the floods in North Korea are no different from the kind of bold statements made by the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s North American admirer, Donald Trump, as he too says that something is either “the worst” or “the greatest/best” in the history of something.

And this is not the first time that North Korea has said that these floods are the worst since WWII, or in the history of the entire country. And It’s probably safe to say that it won’t be the last.

[Featured Image by David Guttenfelder/AP Images]

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