The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy

by Andrew S. Natsios (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1929223336

ISBN-10: 1929223331

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A terrible famine struck the most reclusive society on earth in 1994. Over the next five years, while the North Korean regime tried to hide the dreadful reality and the international community tried hard not to look, perhaps as many as 3 million people starved to death. In this powerful, provocative book, Andrew Natsios asks three overarching questions: What do we know about the origins and extent of the famine? Why did donor governments and organizations not do more to help? What are the consequences of the famine for North Korea and the lessons for the international community?

In the search for answers, Natsios supplements the scanty store of published sources by drawing on the testimony of thousands of refugees, on thousands of e-mails he received while heading an NGO effort to aid the victims, and on his own encounters with officials from North Korea as well as from Western governments. The picture he presents is a disturbing one: human misery on a biblical scale, a paranoid regime that sacrificed its own citizens to ideological rigidity and pride, and foreign governments that subordinated humanitarian impulses to political and diplomatic interests.

A compelling and revealing book for specialists and general readers alike,The Great North Korean Famine takes us not only behind the well-guarded borders of the brutally incompetent “Hermit Kingdom” but also into the policymaking labyrinth where ethics and politics clash in the struggle to shape foreign policy.

The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy, Andrew S. Natsios (American Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) sneaks past the physical and media barricades the North Korean dictatorship hides behind to explore the tragic events that killed approximately three million people between 1994 and 1999. As a senior administrator of an NGO, Natsios spearheaded an international humanitarian effort to stem the famine's spread but was met with ignorance and indifference by many governments and organizations. Culling information from the testimonies of refugees, from his experiences with North Korean and Western officials, and from his considerable grasp of the interplay between the realms of international relief and foreign policy, Natsios delivers a portrait of an unfeeling North Korean government and the politics of humanitarian aid.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

In the Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy, Andrew S. Natsios sneaks past the physical and media barricades the North Korean dictatorship hides behind to explore the tragic evens that killed approximately three million people between 1994 and 1999. . . . Culling information from the testimonies of refugees, from his experience with North Korean and Western officials, and from his considerable grasp of the interplay between the realism of international relief and foreign policy, Natsios delivers a portrait of an unfeeling North Korean government and the politics of humanitarian aid. --Publishers Weekly

Natsios provides the most detailed analysis this reviewer has seen on this massive disaster. . . . The Great North Korean Famine is essential reading for anyone interested in the Korean peninsula. . . . Whether you agree with Natsios's policy recommendations or not, he has written an important and profoundly disturbing book. --Parameters

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Product details

Paperback: 252 pages
Publisher: United States Institute of Peace (October 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1929223331
ISBN-13: 978-1929223336
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 8.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,211,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2974 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Political Science > International Relations
- #17052 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics
- #84143 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences

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Two Stars

ByAndrew Priceon June 3, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Haven't read all of it but it is really dry. Hard to follow through with it.

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got the story right, but the facts wrong

ByA customeron March 24, 2002

Format: Paperback

As a professional colleague once said about another author, he got the story right but the facts wrong.
This is a difficult book to evaluate. It basically gets the story of the North Korean famine right, but it is misleading or wrong in many of the specifics, starting with the first sentence of the book "In September 1995 the North Korean government, in a rare admission of vulnerability announced to the outside world that severe flooding had devastated its agricultural regions and that subsequent failure had caused widespread food shortages." Narrowly true, perhaps - the government of North Korea may well have made such a statement in September 1995 - but thoroughly misleading. The government of North Korea had publicly admitted it had food shortages and successfully reached agreements with Japan and South Korea to supply emergency food aid in May 1995 - before the floods hit in June. So unless time moves backwards on the Korean peninsula, floods in June could not be the cause of agreements reached in May. As evidenced by the September statement that Natsios uses to begin the book, the flooding proved politically useful to both the North Koreans (the famine was an act of God and not a combination of their own incompetence and malevolence) and to the donor community (easier to supply aid in response to victims of natural disasters than victims of a thoroughly odious regime).
Much of this book is built on such half-truths. In part, this is due to its author's intended or inadvertent tendency to place himself at the center of all events. This gives the book a certain strength: the first-hand accounts -- I visited this orphanage on this date and this is what I observed -- are compelling. But either Natsios is disturbingly self-promoting or simply doesn't know what he is talking about. Time and time again, he makes false claims that he was the first (or the only) participant to see or understand some aspect of the famine. For example, in chapter 4 he makes much of his June 1998 trip to the Chinese border region and interviews with North Koreans refugees there. Not for another 150 pages does he mention in passing that his own colleague at the US Institute for Peace, Scott Snyder, had done the same border trip, interviewed the same refugees, and published a report on this a year earlier. To cite another example, the following chapter argues that no one except Natsios and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen understood that famines are economic phenomenon, and as a consequence everyone misread what was occurring in North Korea. Problem is, two economists, Marcus Noland, a Korea specialist associated with the Institution for International Economics, and Sherman Robinson, an agricultural economist affiliated with the International Food Policy Research Institute, had read their Sen, understood the economic basis of famines, and had produced an economic analysis of the North Korean famine, similar to the one that Natsios lays out in this book, in 1998. Indeed, as in the case of Snyder, Noland and Robinson's work is listed in the reference list - so Natsios clearly new of its existence - though oddly it is never mentioned in the text. I could go on. Individuals are misidentified, private informal emails are quoted as "trip reports" etc.
It is unfortunate that this book is so error-filled, since it is unlikely that another comprehensive account of the North Korean famine will be produced in the near future. Moreover, Natsios has been appointed director of the US Agency for International Development, so his view on these issues counts. But while he got the broad outlines of the story right, he is wrong on many specifics, and one should not regard this book as the final authority on the North Korean famine.

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Well-written, a lot of information about North Korea

ByKawaiinekoon March 23, 2002

Format: Paperback

I am very impressed with the new USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios's book "The Great North Korean Famine." If you are a student of famine or interested in what is happening in North Korea, you should read this book. A book like this is hard to come by because information from North Korea is so limited. Gathered and compiled diligently, this is a very well written account of causes and conditions of famine in North Korea that may have killed as many as a couple of million or more people, about 10 percent of the population.
According to the Nobel winning author/economist Amartya Sen (whose book on right-based development I have just read recently), no democratic government has ever let famine happen. Famine is preventable if the government cares about its people.
You should read this book if you are interested in North Korea or on the politics of famine.

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An erudite, well-researched and compelling examination

ByMidwest Book Reviewon January 13, 2002

Format: Paperback

The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, And Foreign Policy by Andrew Natsios (administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development) is an erudite, well-researched and compelling examination of the famine crisis in North Korea; its roots, its politics, its economics, and its bitter consequences. Straightforward narration renders college-level international problems in terminology the lay reader can easily understand. An appendix includes an op-ed piece by the author, succinctly titled "Feed North Korea: Don't Play Politics with Hunger." A powerful, eye-opening, highly recommended study, The Great North Korean Famine is also available in hardcover (192922334X, $42.50).

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