Hazel Smith
Introduction
This chapter argues that the humanitarian costs of the comprehensive economic sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, commonly known as North Korea) have been compara- tively insignificant. The thesis of this chapter is that, while sanctions have not contributed directly to deterioration in the well-being of the population such that they can be understood as causing or con- tributing to a humanitarian emergency, they have engendered costs for economic development that contribute to medium and long- term disadvantage for the well-being of the population. Sanctions, of themselves, are not the only reason for the inability of the country’s government to provide sustainable growth for its citizens, but they have been a powerful deterrent to the foreign investment that would be required to revive and restructure the economy of the DPRK.
Whether this effect of sanctions is normatively justified is, of course, a political matter. Such an evaluation cannot be under- taken by positivist scientific analysis or procedures, although further research from the perspective of rigorous ethical reasoning using diverse philosophical literature might bring interesting insights into
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the normative conundrums arising from economic sanctions on the DPRK. The methodology of this chapter, however, is empiri- cal (although not empiricist) and analytical; the aim is to assess the extant data using fairly settled conceptual categorizations, including of the key concepts of humanitarianism and development.
The chapter proceeds by finessing the distinction between the humanitarian and development spheres. Next, the chapter summa- rizes the extent and intent of economic sanctions on the DPRK. The chapter then considers change in the DPRK in terms of well-being and humanitarian conditions and finds that, both in domestic longi- tudinal comparisons and in comparative country evaluation, the pop- ulation of the DPRK is not any worse off than populations living in poor countries that do not suffer from externally imposed economic sanctions. Given that these are economic sanctions and designed to provide economic constraints on government, it is perhaps counterin- tuitive to find that the population does not face a humanitarian cri- sis and well-being, as assessed by conventional global indicators, like child mortality and malnutrition figures, continues to improve. It is also, however, only an explanation of why humanitarian-crisis condi- tions have not occurred with sanctions; a very different story would be told if development indicators were used as the criteria of assessment.
What This Chapter Is About
First let me say what this chapter is not about. It is not about the theory and policy of sanctions per se. It does not enter the debate as to whether sanctions are useful as an instrument of foreign policy, whether they are used as a substitute for military sanctions or as an accompaniment to military activity, or whether they are supposed to damage the elites or the populations of the country being sanc- tioned. It does not delve into the debates as to whether sanctions should be comprehensive, smart, or targeted or whether sanctions are best implemented multilaterally or unilaterally.1 These are all
1 For an accessible review of relevant literature, see Daniel W. Drezner, “Sanctions Sometimes Smart: Targeted Sanctions in Theory and Practice,” International Studies Quarterly 13 (2011): 96–108, accessed August 1, 2016, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/~/
media/Fletcher/News%20Images/Drezner_Sanctions.pdf.
important debates, albeit in many ways unresolvable, but they do not provide the focus for this chapter.
Neither does this chapter provide a generalized discussion of the impact of all sanctions on the DPRK, nor is it a discussion of the varying post–Cold War (in Europe at least) humanitarian condition of the population of the DPRK, including the terrible famine of the 1990s, which I have treated extensively elsewhere.2 Instead, my focus remains a narrow one. I take the research question as the following:
What is the humanitarian cost of the escalation of sanctions on the DPRK since 2006? This is an important question, as it takes on a debate about sanctions that is often shaped more by political polar- ity than rigorous analysis. The aim is therefore both to answer the specific question and to bring analytical, conceptual, and empirical clarity to the terms of reference of the debate.
The chronological context is of the increasingly extensive and intensive economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council from 2006 onward in response to the DPRK’s escalating nuclear programs.3 The empirical context is of the post–Cold War globalized economic dynamics in which the DPRK no longer has preferential trading regimes abroad and in which the supply, cost, and price of goods is largely determined by these global dynamics.
The Humanitarian and the Development Spheres
In ordinary discourse, any damage or threat to well-being, whether in the short, medium, or long-term, has deleterious effects, and these are “humanitarian” costs by definition, because they affect the human being. In this sense, all threats to well-being have human- itarian consequences. Economic sanctions on the DPRK, because they contribute to an environment in which growth is precarious and the well-being of individuals can never be taken for granted, have humanitarian costs. This approach is valid and true at a very
2 Hazel Smith, Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2005).
3 Hazel Smith, North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015).
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general level of analysis, but it is not very helpful for understanding differentiated threats to well-being.
In this chapter, I acknowledge that economic sanctions have a human cost insomuch as they are designed to limit the economic options of the country, and it is simply a truism to observe that there are very likely human costs arising from constraints on economic growth in any society, including in the DPRK. To assess to what extent there are humanitarian implications of economic sanctions on the DPRK, however, it is useful to further conceptualize what we understand by the concept of humanitarian. We can use the scholarly and policy literature on development and humanitarianism to distin- guish these two concepts and help us assess how and why, specifically, the population of the DPRK is affected by international sanctions.
Humanitarianism and Development
There is a large and diverse literature on the theory and practice of humanitarianism, the theory and practice of development, and the relationship between these two spheres of policy and activity.4 Some of the literature is based in the world of scholarship, but a lot of it is produced as policy analysis by very large international agencies, the governments who fund them, and operational actors who engage in projects that fall under their rubric. This is not the place to consider the relative scientific merit of these publications; instead, it is suffi- cient to identify core ideas that provide conventional and widely accepted understandings of the different spheres.
4 Useful contributions include Larry Minear, The Humanitarian Enterprise
(Bloomfield: Kumarian, 2002); Ian Smillie and Larry Minear, The Charity of Nations:
Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World (Bloomfield: Kumarian, 2004); Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press for African Rights and the International Africa Institute, 1997); Craig N. Murphy, The United Nations Development Programme (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Deborah Eade and Tony Vaux, eds., Development and Humanitarianism (Bloomfield: Kumarian, 2007); Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). The international agencies often provide very useful analysis of the debates and issues. See websites of IFRC, UNDP, and UNOCHA in particular.
Of course, in practice, the two spheres of activity can and do have fuzzy boundaries, and there is a good deal of research activ- ity that explores the gray areas between the two. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this chapter, it is sufficient to recall that in the- ory, in international law, and in a good part of international prac- tice, the humanitarian and development spheres are distinct from each other. Humanitarian and development activities have differ- ent aims and are governed by different international legislation. A major difference between the humanitarianism and development spheres is that while international humanitarian actors substitute for governmental capacity, international development actors com- plement government capacity.
In the literature, there are as many understandings of what con- stitutes “humanitarian” as there are writers, but as Barnet and Weiss point out, unless one is prepared to stretch the concept so much that every action that helps other human beings is construed as humani- tarian, some conceptual clarity is required.5 In this chapter, we adopt the conventional understanding of humanitarian threats as those posing immediate danger to life and well-being. Conventionally then a humanitarian crisis is understood as occurring if there are immediate threats to the lives and well-being of a population.
In international law, which is still largely based on state sover- eignty, it is states and their respective governments that have legal responsibility to provide for the welfare of their populations. Inter- national humanitarian actors generally intervene when the respec- tive government or prevailing political authority does not or cannot respond to threats to life. Humanitarianism is therefore dealing with extreme threats to life, usually short-term threats, and by definition, humanitarian actors are acting in lieu of government capacity.
By contrast, development as a concept has come to be understood as a social and economic process that includes economic growth but also material well-being for the population, improved quality of life, a fair distribution of resources, and sustainable environments.
Governments own the development process, not the international
5 Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 11.
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partners with whom they often work. A development crisis then can best be understood as a failure by government over a medium to long duration to maintain sustainable, improved quality of life for the population.
International Humanitarian and Development Actors and Indicators The major international agencies tend to operate primarily in either the humanitarian or development sphere, with each having differ- ent criteria for programming and different operating procedures.
The UN World Food Program (WFP), for example, often works via short-term interventions in crises while the World Health Organi- zation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tend to work in more long-term programs of structural change and UNICEF works in both. These are not hard and fast distinctions, but they provide useful delineators.
Humanitarian agencies and the humanitarian work they do are focused on short-term responses to major disasters—whether from war and armed conflict or other causes like floods, earthquakes, and epidemics. By contrast, at least in theory, development work takes over when the immediate threats are mitigated; although, on the ground, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between when a humanitarian crisis is in progress and when needs are more develop- mental. International agencies and the governments that fund them, however, do not engage in arbitrary decision making.
The agencies rely on common assessments of well-being, using basic indicators, including child mortality, infant mortality, mal- nutrition, and disease incidence. Sometimes, for instance during armed hostilities, it is difficult to collect relevant data, and in some cases, it might be immoral to engage in data-collection exercises when devastation is obvious and horrible, as in Aleppo at the time of writing (August 2016). Nevertheless, in most countries, includ- ing the DPRK, the major international agencies rely on a collective institutional knowledge and data systematically collected, collated, and analyzed using internal and external expertise.
UN agency data collection follows strict international protocols, led by high-quality senior epidemiologists and statisticians from all over the globe, who are contracted in to work with the UN agencies, and the UN data is in turn systematically collated and analyzed by World Bank statisticians over time. The same basic indicators are used to evaluate social and economic development in all counties through- out the globe; it is this massive statistical expertise that has under- pinned the successful MDG Goals exercise, which is entirely based on quantitative assessment of achievements in poverty reduction.6
The major international agencies involved in large-scale devel- opment strategies are the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) along with global partners like the Gates Foundation. The World Bank is a major provider of capital investment, whereas the UNDP, while it funds some projects, posi- tions itself as a provider of development policy advice. Wealthy gov- ernments often fund development projects overseas bilaterally but also work through the major agencies like the World Bank. Home governments do not always rely on external development agencies to fund domestic development projects. China, for example, sub- stantially funds development projects at home—sometimes work- ing in partnership with external funders on projects designed to bring long-term national benefits. International business may also be understood as sometimes engaging in development projects in partnership with the recipient government.
Economic Sanctions and the DPRK
The DPRK has been targeted by different types of sanctions by different actors since its inception as a state in 1948. What makes recent sanctions different is that they are universal. Since 2006, the UN Security Council has imposed progressively more expansive economic sanctions in response to nuclear tests and the develop- ment of ballistic missile technology by way of UNSC Resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013), and 2270 (2016). We can call the period from 2006 onward the “era of uni-
6 Millennium Project, accessed August 1, 2016, www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/.
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versal sanctions,” given that these were United Nations promulgated sanctions that had the effect of legally committing all UN mem- ber states to their implementation. The universal sanctions regime should be distinguished from the previous period of various bilateral sanctions imposed on the DPRK by individual states like the United States and the United Kingdom.
Universal sanctions prohibit the export to the DPRK of luxury goods and all goods that could contribute to the nuclear and mis- sile programs. Individuals, organizations, and businesses, including banking and finance companies, that are judged to contribute to the DPRK’s nuclear arms programs are specifically targeted. North Korean coal, iron, and iron ore may not be exported from the DPRK except and unless those exports are necessary for “livelihood” pur- poses and the export revenues do not contribute to North Korea’s arms programs. Food and basic “humanitarian” trade are excluded from the sanctions measures.
One consequence of economic sanctions is that the major devel- opment agencies are prohibited from lending to the DPRK. Sanc- tions also deter public investors (governments) and private investors (business) even when such investments do not directly contravene international sanctions rules. This is because of the political insta- bility that threatens investments and the fear of having global non- DPRK economic relations caught up in the international sanctions surveillance under which any DPRK investment, including legal investment, operates. There are few countervailing forces to encour- age major foreign investors to take risks with their capital or to lobby for exemptions to the rules. The DPRK has little to offer in terms of strategic goods like oil or gas.
Implementation
All UN member states, including China and Russia, which both share land (and maritime) borders with the DPRK and through which most of the DPRK’s trade flows, are enjoined to implement these universal sanctions, but it is up to each individual UN mem- ber state to decide what counts as falling within and without the
sanctions regimes. China and Russia are frequently accused by the United States of not being stringent enough in their application of sanctions on the DPRK; both China and Russia refute these allega- tions and argue that they are only allowing trade that is not prohib- ited by UN sanctions.
Sanctions are not implemented in a political or historical vacuum.
The five permanent members of the Security Council have very dif- ferent ideological and security aims in their relationship with the DPRK, and these aims are reflected in their varying approaches to the aims and function of the sanctions. The US policy to the DPRK is shaped by a multiplicity of goals that can perhaps be summed up as a regime-change preference; China and Russia, in contrast, prior- itize regional stability. China and Russia have little interest in prohib- iting trade flows in respect to food, shelter, energy, agriculture, health, and other goods that relate to humanitarian notions of well-being, for example, educational materials, clothing, and civilian transport.
China has explicitly stated that, apart from directly sanctioned goods, trade relations with the DPRK remain “normal.”7
The Importance of China
China’s perspective on the implementation of sanctions is crucial, as the DPRK is trade dependent on China; by 2016, over three-quar- ters of DPRK trade was with China. The DPRK, therefore, relies on trade with China to sustain its limited economic growth. It is diffi- cult, however, to assess definitively structural trends in DPRK trade relations with China, as the data is somewhat episodic; the relatively small volume of trade (for China and in global terms) can vary for short-term, conjunctural reasons. In the first quarter of 2016, for example, Chinese-DPRK trade actually grew compared to the previ- ous year; DPRK exports to China grew by 10 percent, and its imports from China increased by 14 percent.8 In May 2016, how- ever, DPRK import and export trade figures posted a decline against
7 “China’s Q1 Trade with North Korea Up Despite Sanctions,” Straits Times, April 13, 2016, accessed July 31, 2016, www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinas-q1-trade- with-north-korea-up-despite-sanctions.
8 Ibid.
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the same month the previous year.9 Given that South Korea’s trade with China also reported decreases in the same period, the reduction in DPRK-China trade should perhaps be attributed to global trends, including generally low world commodity prices for North Korean exports and the slowdown in Chinese growth, as well as perhaps because of tighter sanctions enforcement by China.
Irrespective of the reasons for fluctuations, another salient fea- ture of DPRK-China trade is that of its low volume. DPRK-China trade volumes are insignificant compared to Chinese global trade volumes, as well as compared to China’s trade with the Republic of Korea. Scott and Jung report that “South Korea–China trade sharply increased from US$31 billion in 2000 to US$227 billion in 2015,”
while Frank reports that the DPRK’s total trade volume in 2015 was just $7.6 billion (US), with 90 percent of that figure representing China-DPRK trade volumes.10
Given the underlying economic deprivation in the DPRK and the unresolved security tensions that inhibit foreign investment, there are no indications that DPRK trade with China or any other country is likely to significantly increase in the short or medium term, such as to take it out of what the World Bank defines as the low-income category of states.11 From July 1, 2016, the World Bank clarified its data categories such that “low-income economies are defined as those with a GNI per capita…of $1,025 or less in 2015;
lower middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $1,026 and $4,035; upper middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $4,036 and $12,475; high-in- come economies are those with a GNI per capita of $12,476 or
9 Deok-hyun Kim, “China’s Imports of N. Korean Goods Fall 12.6 Pct in May,” Yonhap News, June 22, 2016, accessed July 30, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/
national/2016/06/22/26/0301000000AEN20160622010200315F.html.
10 Jeffrey J. Schott and Euijin Jung, “South Korea–China FTA Falls Short on Reform,”
East Asia Forum, May 29, 2016, accessed August 1, 2016, www.eastasiaforum.
org/2016/05/29/south-korea-china-fta-falls-short-on-reform/; Rüdiger Frank,
“North Korea’s Foreign Trade,” 38 North, October 22, 2015, accessed August 1, 2016, http://38north.org/2015/10/rfrank102215/.
11 World Bank, World Development Indicators, accessed August 1, 2016, http://data.worldbank.org/?locations=XM-KP.