Donors of Humanitarian and Development Assistance to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Abstract

With the outbreak of famine in the mid-1990s, the DPRK has become a
recipient of humanitarian assistance. Immediately after the inception of aid
flows, an extensive diversification of donors arose. The most important
donor duo was the Republic of Korea and the USA. Japan, Russia, and the
European Union all had important roles in the matter, and Switzerland had
a very specific role in it. Meanwhile, the Chinese assistance obtained an
entirely unique position. There was a temporary suspension of China’s
assistance in the mid-1990s, but then it started again, and today, China is
the DPRK’s patron. The aim of this article is to provide a comparison of the
donors’ strategies and to outline the main trends of the assistance to the
DPRK in the framework of the period of 1995–2012. The strategies of
donorship have divergent tendencies, and in most of the cases, the donors
preferred to make a strong effort to reach their political goals in the DPRK
while providing humanitarian aid to it.