North Koreans living near the border with China have it a bit better. Their relatives on the Chinese side regularly trek to border crossings laden with sacks of rice, maize and flour. There, they telegram or telephone their kin living inland, who come to retrieve the life-giving gifts. Frontier guards do not mind so long as they receive some food too. The U.N. and the Red Cross are trying to coordinate an international relief effort that is achieving only limited success.
Old suspicions are partly to blame.
Last week, Red Cross officials from both Koreas met in Beijing for the first time in five years to discuss the terms of delivering private donations to the North. But the meeting broke up without agreement. North Korea demands food aid first before it sits down to discuss peace. Pyongyang's bankrupt economic system. Instead, it is content to view the food shortage as a temporary blip that simply resulted from poor harvests.