Charity demands Seoul allow TB medication shipment to N. Korea

S. Korea doesn’t have a “mature humanitarian policy," Eugene Bell Foundation chairman says

Speaking at a news conference after returning from a three-week visit to North Korea, Stephen Linton, Chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation, said South Korea’s MoU lacked a “mature humanitarian policy.”

“I went to the Ministry of Unification a few days ago and asked their permission to ship the first round of [medical supplies] in 2017, but their answer wasn’t favorable, saying ‘not now, and please wait,’” Linton said.

Linton said that an official from the MoU pledged at a meeting held back in August that they would ensure the foundation could send MDR-TB drugs to North Korea “without any problems.”

“I asked whether our [verbal] promise was broken, but they gave us an absurd answer. He told me I could ‘go and ask Kim Jong Un’ [the reason for the unapproval],” Linton told reporters, without revealing the name of the MoU official.

Linton argued that humanitarian aid should continue regardless of North Korean provocation and political strife between the two Koreas.

“If a person doesn’t extinguish a fire breaking next-door because he or she hates the host, they are a ‘foolish person,’” he said. “The fire will spread to their house, and so does an infectious disease.”

Linton pointed out that medical supplies had to be loaded in January, despite the MoU’s claims the foundation could wait until March, April or May.

He maintained there was a slim chance that the MoU would allow the foundation to ship cargo before May, as North Korea and the South in tandem with the United States usually conduct military drills at that time of year.

“If [the shipping] has been continually delayed, there is a possibility that [the drugs] may arrive [in the North] after our visit in May,” Linton said. “If our patients run out of drugs and develop increased drug resistance, they are likely to die. We must avoid this.”

The MoU, however, refuted Linton’s claims on Thursday.

“We aren’t opposing the request, but we are now positively considering it,” a MoU official told NK News on the condition of anonymity, without providing information about when the authorities would complete the approval procedure.

The number of newly registered patients in North Korea was estimated at 534 in 2016, only half of the foundation’s objectives.

“Until last year, we could develop our project without difficulties and in cooperation with the South Korean government,” Linton told reporters. “We’ve had troubles in shipping the medical supplies since this year. I wouldn’t provide the details on how [the foundation] managed to send [the drugs], but I was in ‘a lot of pain.’”

Linton confessed he had to consider moving the foundation’s headquarters to another country because of South Korea’s restrictions, especially given estimates that there are between 4,000 to 5,000 new MDR-TB cases in North Korea every year.

“We have had to scale down our project for the first time in eight years,” he said.

The South Korean government didn’t provide an exemption for humanitarian aid in its most recent sanctions on North Korea in the wake of Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test on January 6.

“If a society has a ‘mature moral view,’ it should distinguish patients, poor people, and children from the regime,” Linton pointed out.

Linton read a letter from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to the foundation to show the U.S. response to the organization’s request to change the license of the TB diagnosis and resistance testing GeneXpert machines.

The foundation, he revealed, plans to leave the machines in the DPRK so that North Koreans can better diagnose MDR-TB by themselves at an early stage.

“The United States remains deeply concerned about the well-being of the North Korean people. It is my hope we will accomplish a workable solution to meet your appeal,” Kerry told Linton.

Linton said that the DPRK’s Ministry of Public Health pledged to cooperate with the foundation’s treatment activities at talks held after the North postponed a visit by Eugene Bell’s Autumn delegation.

North Korea demanded the foundation change their plans so the delegation could visit the country in May and November, for fear the talks would clash with a series of military drills and one of the DPRK’s biggest holidays in April.

Eugene Bell members visited all twelve of the MDR-TB treatment centers supported by the foundation three weeks behind schedule from November 22 to December 13.

The Eugene Bell Foundation is considered the only nongovernmental organization (NGO) to have earned the trust of the North Korean government. The charity has worked in the country since 1995.

Source: NK News