United Methodists are pressing their efforts to aid famine-stricken North Korea with a new plan that would ask congregations in the United States to pledge support for medical supplies and food to each of 12 provincial orphanages in the flood-ravaged Communist country.

Photograph by Rolf Huss, World Food Program.

These two North Korean children have signs of malnutrition, swollen faces and enlarged heads.

That and other United Methodist Church measures to help North Korea were spelled out by the Rev. Dr. Michael Hahm, GBGM executive secretary for justice and advocacy in the Mission Contexts and Relations program area.

A United States Congress team that visited North Korea in August estimates the famine has killed between 900,000 and 2.4 million people in the last three years. The famine came in the wake of severe floods and drought that have beset the country for three straight years, beginning in 1995. GBGM has been active in aiding North Korea since 1996.

Besides the plan to aid orphanages, United Methodists are participating in plans to dispatch a freighter to North Korea with large quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies, seed, and fertilizer. The ship would leave Houston, Texas, and reach North Korea in February when, because of winter, the cargo would be most urgently needed.

Discussing the plan to aid orphanages, Hahm said GBGM officials were considering an appeal to both UMC and Lutheran congregations in the St. Paul, Minnesota, area. Those congregations include families that have adopted Korean children and have already shown keen interest in aiding North Korea through GBGM, Hahm said.

Earlier this year, church members in St. Paul, many of them Lutherans, donated more than $2,600 to the UMC to help North Korea, Hahm said.

"There were many parents who adopted Korean babies," said Hahm. "'We thought we would go back to St. Paul, say there are 12 orphanages; each church takes one. So that is our plan at the moment."

Any such support would go for whatever needed medicines and medical supplies are not already available to North Korean orphanages through the United Nations, Hahm said. GBGM is awaiting word from the UN's World Food Program (WFP) staff in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, on just what medical items are not currently supplied through the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Hahm said.

An answer is expected within the next three weeks, Hahm said. "Once we get that information we'd like to directly approach the folks in Minnesota," he said.

The effort to send a freighter to North Korea is underway in Houston, Texas. Cargo will include 150,000 40-pound boxes of food, each containing 20 pounds of rice, and quantities of powered milk, shortening, canned vegetables and soups, cans of meat, fish or pork, and one pound of hard candies.

Also aboard will be large quantities of seed packets, fertilizer, and $60,000 in medicine and medical supplies slated for orphanages, nurseries and pediatric clinics, among other cargo.

The vessel will probably leave Houston in December. The relief shipment project began among churches within the Texas Annual Conference and soon grew into the Christian Alliance for Humanitarian Aid, Inc., headed by prominent United Methodist businessman Jesse Stokely, and drawing on various denominations. Stokely is a member of First United Methodist Church, Houston, whose pastor, the Rev. William H. Hinson, was part of a GBGM team that visited North Korea recently.

Briefing Continues...

September 23, 1998