| Desperate North Korea needs aid, church members say By Kathy L. GilbertUnited Methodist News Service  As tensions between the United States and North Korea grow daily, Korean-American United Methodists are feeling the pain and frustration of seeing their dreams for peace and the reunification of North and South Korea slip further away.
 The Rev. Youngsook Kang, an executive with the denominations Board of Global Ministries, visited North Korea in July.
I am from South Korea, she said. When I was in North Korea, I just felt immediately we are all one people. Koreans both from North and South are one race, one nation, one people, one language. For me, it is very tragic that one nation with one people is divided. When I was there, I heard time and again the desire for peaceful reunification. The desire is from North and South Korea. Over the years, North Korea and the United States have had meetings, agreements and disputes over nuclear weapons and economic sanctions. Tensions heated up again in January, when North Korea made U.N. inspectors leave the country. North Korea says the United States violated the 1994 Geneva Framed Agreement by cutting oil supplies to Pyongyang. President George W. Bush says North Korea violated the agreement when it restarted its nuclear program. Both sides have demands. North Korea wants to sit down at the table with the United States and get assurances of peace. President Bush has said North Korea must first disarm.  The U.S. constantly threatens North Korea, says the Rev. KilSang Yoon, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry. As a Korean-American United Methodist, Yoon has made it his mission to do everything possible to bring about the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea. He has made more than 20 trips to North Korea in the last 13 years for that purpose.
The North Korean people have been asking to end the Korean war by turning the cease-fire agreement into a permanent peace agreement, but the U.S. government is not listening, Yoon says. We (U.S. government) push them, choke them. It is very tragic. In the 1994 Geneva Framed Agreement, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program and seal the spent fuel rods in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors. The U.S. was supposed to compensate for the loss of electricity with 500,000 tons of crude oil annually. The U.S. promised to build two light water reactors by 2003, but only the foundation has been laid; the promises have not been fulfilled, Yoon says. He also points out that in the 1999 William Perry report, the United States agreed that the best way to deal with North Korea was through engagement. The White House turned back the clock in 2001, Yoon says, when President Bush referred to North Korea as part of an axis of evil.  Every president since Eisenhower has had to deal with some crisis on the Korean Peninsula, says the Rev. James Laney, a United Methodist pastor and educator who served as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1997. All of them have elected to find some peaceful way to resolve it.
Laney says there has been no final solution, but none of the U.S. leaders has thought the situation was worth the kind of sacrifice that war would entail. I think the situation is worsening because the attention of the U.S. is almost exclusively focused on Iraq, he said. As a result, we are not taking the leadership and showing the initiative to try to resolve this situation on the Korean Peninsula as we should. The urgency of the situation in North Korea requires immediate attention because once they start reprocessing spent fuel rods which they had 8,000 of them before 1994 it will be very difficult to know what the situation is or to get it back into the box, he says. Kang says North Korea wants assurance of peace and economic aid. Their economic situation is so dire that they are using the weapons program as their bargaining chip, she says. The U.S. government needs to be more flexible instead of just demanding North Korea disarm before coming to the negotiation table, Kang says. They are very desperate in seeking aid. Compared to a few years ago, they are doing better, but their situation is very bad. I think that they are open and willing to come to the negotiation table as long as the U.S. comes to the table. I am not blaming it all on the U.S., but the U.S. government needs to be a little more flexible. Once you get to the table, then you can talk about it. I really want the U.S. government to give a negotiation opportunity to North Korea, she says. Yoon says South Koreans, especially young people, have concluded that North Korea is no longer a threat. | 
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