Speaker: Dr. Tae Keung Ha, President, Open Radio for North Korea
Hosted by: The Embassy of the Republic of Korea
Location: KORUS House – 2370 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008
RSVP/info: Adam Wojciechowicz, awoj@koreaembassy.org, (202) 587-6168

Description:
As new shipments of international food aid arrive in North Korea, personal accounts that emerge from the country continue to paint varying pictures of a food shortage: some claim that without immediate, effective food distribution, hundreds of thousands of deaths are imminent in certain areas, while others assert that the problem does not reach epidemic levels, and that starvation is not a leading cause of death. With many such testimonies as evidence, two opposing camps now debate whether North Korea once again faces mass starvation or not, and what foreign aid policy should follow. Dr. Tae Keung Ha will discuss the ongoing efforts to arrive at a consensus, how the information gap can be narrowed, and how this knowledge can best inform the aid policies of donors, including the United States and South Korea—where aid, incentives, and the Sunshine policy of the past remain important political and ethical issues. How effective has food aid been when confronting such a controlling regime, and what hope is there for future success?

Tae Keung Ha is the president of Open Radio for North Korea, which broadcasts educational, cultural, and personal message programming into North Korea and receives funding support from the U.S. government. Previously he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C. (2005) and worked as a senior research fellow at SK Research Institute, an international coordinator at the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet), and as a journalist and interpreter. He has also assisted North Korean refugees along the border with China. Dr. Ha received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Seoul National University, a master’s degree from the Graduate School of International Studies at Korea University, and a doctoral degree from the World Economy Institute (Northeast Asia) at Jilin University, China.