Q & AAsia-Pacific

Using Food Aid to Contain North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions

While the horrific famine in the Horn of Africa has captured international attention, a similar emergency on the other side of the world, in North Korea, has quietly moved past the point of crisis.

The World Food Program in April called for $224 million in emergency aid for North Korea. But the international community -- particularly the United States and South Korea, traditionally the largest donors to North Korea -- have so far refused to fund the request.

Their resistance, according to Roberta Cohen, a nonresident senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, can best be explained by a desire to leverage such aid as a tool to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

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