At the Imjinak Peace Park, a convoy of flatbed trucks are loaded with sacks of flour. Rev. In Myung-jin of the Korea Sharing Movement said the 300 tons of flour will help feed 22,000 North Korean children. But he said aid from charities alone can’t help all those in need.

“Our support through the NGO is very little, not enough to prevent the starvation in North Korea,” he said. “So we try to urge our government to support North Korea.”

But even though the government in Seoul now allows private aid to the north, it still won’t provide any official assistance. That, even as the UN World Food program warns that many North Koreans face a severe food shortage yet again.

The European Union has its own concerns about providing aid to North Korea; still, it recently announced a plan to dispatch about $14 million worth of relief. But the EU’s change of heart hasn’t swayed Seoul, according to Cho Joong Hoon, director of the Humanitarian Assistance division at the South Korean Ministry of Unification.

Cho Joong Hoon said EU officials decided to send emergency aid based on what they witnessed after visiting there. But Seoul won’t send aid to the North because of current disputes, which include the sinking of a South Korean warship and the bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010.

Making sure the food actually reaches those who need it is another concern. Europe said it has been given unprecedented access to ensure that North Korea’s military won’t siphon off the aid. Private aid groups say they are also monitoring food distribution.

Park Chang-il, who works with an aid group that produces tofu and soy milk at factories in Pyongyang, said he relies on his North Korean colleagues there.

“When it’s possible,” he said, “we deliver the products to the school or location ourselves. But when we can’t go we ask our North Korean partners to send us pictures or documents showing that the food was distributed to those who need it.”

But some observers say corruption is so endemic in North Korea, that it’s impossible to prevent some food aid from being diverted. Shin Ju Hyun, chief editor at The Daily NK, a news website that relies on sources inside North Korea, said he’s not even sure there’s really a severe food crisis taking place right now.

Hyun said based on what he learned from North Korean defectors and soldiers on a recent trip to the Chinese border, he didn’t feel that the food situation was any worse than it has been in previous years. One difference, he added, is that because of a recent currency revaluation, some people who used to buy food on the black market can no longer afford it.

Hyun said despite Pyongyang’s own very public requests for food, he thinks the regime might be stockpiling aid for next year. The north is planning a celebration to mark the 100th birthday of founder Kim II Sung and it wants to present an image of power and prosperity.

North Korea propaganda analyst Brian Myers said posters began appearing in North Korea in 2008 depicting families sitting at tables with various meats piled on top. But he said as it became clear that Seoul wasn’t going to send food aid, those images started to change.

“In January 2010, a new poster was issued which showed a vegetarian table, there was no more meat on display,” Myers said. “Instead, there was a lot of rice, and potatoes and corn, things the regime could already lay claim to providing its people. And this downscaling of public expectations seems to be continuing even now.”

Myers recently travelled to the north, and said he saw many children who showed signs of malnutrition, even in relatively affluent Pyongyang.

That could be a sign that the public’s expectations there might be pretty low already.

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Lisa Mullins: Jean Lee is the bureau chief in Seoul for the Associated Press.  And Jean Lee, you have traveled frequently to North Korea.  This year you were granted rather unusual access for your trip.  That was in April.  I wonder, we heard in Jason’s piece, that some people doubt that food is scarce in North Korea.  Did you find evidence during your visit there that there is a scarcity and indeed starvation as well?

Jean Lee: In the capital itself there isn’t any obvious scarcity of food.  Of course, things change dramatically as soon as you leave the city.  The infrastructure, the roads are not as good as they might be in other countries, so it’s very hard to get some of the food supplies out there.  I think that the concern among the aid workers is that some of the vulnerable populations — the elderly, the pregnant, children in some of these urban centers out in the northeastern provinces — aren’t getting the basics that they need.  And that the daily rations that the government has been providing, that amount has dropped down quite a bit.  And these are people who might not have access to gardens where they might be able to grow their own food.

Mullins: So, Jean, how do we even know this though?  I mean it’s not called the Hermit Kingdom for nothing.  What evidence is there of a scarcity?

Lee: Aid workers conducted quite an extensive, I think it was six week field study earlier this year.  And they went to villages across North Korea to see what the situation was.  And they are coming back reporting that they’re seeing quite a bit more of malnourishment, children who look a lot more stunted, and they are reporting that people seem to be suffering quite a bit more than they may have been in the past. The other evidence is just the sheer fact that’s it’s been a brutal year for North Korea.  They had quite a bit of severe flooding in t he fall.  It was the coldest winter in 60 years, which was when records started to be kept.  So, it was a very, very cold winter both in North and South Korea and that destroyed their winter wheat.  And of course, they had foot and mouth disease.  So they relied quite a bit on oxen rather than tractors because they have a shortage of fuel, and foot and mouth disease apparently decimated quite a number of their livestock, so that was a concern as well.

Mullins: And again, as we heard, there are concerns that the military in North Korea might be siphoning off the aid, that’s a constant concern; and that the regime might be stockpiling aid for the big birthday celebration coming up next year; the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung, the founder of modern day North Korea.  How are those concerns being addressed?

Lee: I think there is quite a bit of skepticism in some capitals because they have played up this 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, and generally on these big holidays they do like to give out food baskets that include some meat, some liquor, candy; so there’s some question whether they’re trying to ask for money in advance of that holiday, which is April 15th.

Mullins: Jean, just one other question: I want you to talk just in closing about the access that you had in North Korea because you’ve been there many times.  You went with a photographer and if you look at the photos that the AP photographer, David Guttenfelder, took, that we’re making a link to on our website, I mean people you know, they’re laughing, they look like they have quite normal lives.  We know that’s certainly not true even in Pyonyang, but through the rest of North Korea.  But what was the most striking thing that you did see?

Lee: One of the places that was so interesting was to go to the amusement park because you really did see people purely just enjoying themselves.  So, seeing kids hanging out in groups and snapping pictures of each other, and people calling out and saying hello to us, trying to get us on rides with them, and you know, just seeing that kind of very casual interaction like you might see anywhere else was very telling I think, because it’s not scripted.  People are laughing, children are running around.  Then you realize that regardless of how hard their lives are and the kind of rules that they live under, which is undeniable in a place like North Korea, that they still try to make the best of it and that they still like to have a good time.  You know, going into the fast food restaurant at the amusement park and scenes, and American brand or Canadian brand of maple syrup with Belgian waffles.  And you know, we ordered fried chicken and burgers, and hotdogs — you know, we could’ve been anywhere. Now, like I’ve said in my story, I think this is North Korea’s way of trying to introduce these things to their people.  They clearly are aware that these things are available outside.  And that, I think, is notable that there’s this growing middle class even in a place like Pyonyang.

Mullins: Thank you, Jean Lee.  Jean Lee is the bureau chief in Seoul, South Korea for the Associated Press.  She and AP photographer, David Guttenfelder, were granted unprecedented access to North Korea this past springtime.  To see some of their photos from the trip deep inside North Korea, parts we seldom see, head to our website, theworld.org.  Thanks, Jean.

Lee: Thank you very much.

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Estimated food security conditions, 3rd Quarter 2011 (July-September 2011) (Graphic courtesy: Fews Net)

If you look up the word “famine” in your dictionary, you will find it defined as ‘extreme hunger,’ or ‘starvation.’ That seems to describe what people are experiencing in East Africa, and it is a word some recent news reports have used.

But if you ask some scientists working on food security issues, you will find them steering clear of the word.

“There’s been an enormous shift away from using ‘famine’ as a label,” said NASA’s Molly Brown, who works as part of the US government’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWSNET.

FEWSNET forecasts food shortages in different parts of the world.

Brown said that in decades past, governments and aid organizations often used the word famine to describe food emergencies, but they are less likely to do so today. In fact, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network has never declared a famine since its launch in the mid-1980s.

There are several reasons why experts avoid the word famine.

For one, it can sometimes make national governments defensive. Politicians look bad if a famine has been declared in their country, and they may deny the problem and refuse help to save face.

Also, declaring a famine can have unintended effects on local food markets.

“People who have available food for sale might say, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll wait another month or two because the prices are all going to go up,’” Brown said. That can mean even less food is available to those who need it.

Brown said using the famine label can be a good thing because it spurs the international community to act, but using the label too readily can backfire.

“If in 2012 they have another drought, or the drought continues, what are they going to do?” she asked. “If you use that trump card, you can’t take it back, and you can’t reuse it.”

So if “famine” is too weighty, emotive, and political a word to use – at least for now – how does one describe situations like the current one in East Africa?

For scientists and food aid experts, the answer is something called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, which is a standardized scale that enables experts to rate food security from one to five, using a host of factors.

Nicholas Haan, cofounder and executive director of the IPC, explained that those factors include “rainfall, conflict, crop production, livestock conditions, nutrition,” and other measures.

A rating of one means an abundance of food. Five is the worst-case scenario – a famine.

Right now, in East Africa, the situation is phase four, or a food security emergency.

“In this particular case, it hasn’t yet reached famine levels,” said Camilla Knox-Pebbles of the aid group Oxfam, “although there are some indications that in some places we are very close to that given the high malnutrition levels.”

And that means the situation in parts of East Africa could officially be designated a famine soon if, experts say, the international community does not help now.

• Jeffrey Gettleman’s story in the New York Times
• World Food Program – Somalia
• BBC World Service Africa

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MARCO WERMAN:  Nearly two decades of fighting and humanitarian suffering has left Somalia a failed state.  More than a third of the people in the east African nation are hungry.  Now it appears that much of the food aid intended for them is being stolen.  A U.N. Security Council study reportedly concludes that corrupt contractors, Islamist militants and even local U.N. workers are taking up to half the aid meant for the needy.  Jeffrey Gettleman is east African correspondent for the New York Times.  Jeff, to start off with here, what makes food distribution in Somalia so difficult?

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN:  Truly a perfect storm of problems.  For starters there’s no government and as a result, the place has been lawless and chaotic for the last 20 years.  Then you have this new problem of kidnapping of aid workers and threats to Westerners so it’s very hard for any aid agency to monitor what’s going on in Somalia because there’s almost no foreign presence there.  There are no diplomats, there are no aid workers.  Very few journalists go in there and then on top of that you have a country that has been struck by drought after drought, crisis after crisis.  You have millions of people who have been displaced and displaced people can’t farm, they can’t fend for themselves, they can’t feed themselves so as a result you have great need and then on the other side great difficulty in meeting those needs because of the lawlessness and the chaos.

WERMAN:  So in other words, because there are no aid workers there to kind of receive this shipment of aid, the West is essentially sending all of its food aid and not knowing how it’s kind of arriving or where it goes.

GETTLEMAN:  There are local aid organizations and some of them do very heroic work.  Many local aid workers have been killed by different militant groups.  These people are considered spies by some of the militant groups just because they’re working with an American or a British or a foreign aid organization so they’re taking huge risks just to be there.

WERMAN:  Well take us through briefly, Jeff, what happens when that food arrives in Somalia.  Someone in Nairobi rubber-stamps a multi-ton shipment of food aid.  Take us through what happens before it actually gets to the people who need it, once that food aid comes to the port.

GETTLEMAN:  You know I think it’s a really interesting topic.  Once the ships land in Somalia, they have to subcontract the delivery of the aid to a whole bunch of different actors, some with ties to militant groups, some that don’t have the best business reputation but they’re the only guys in town that have the trucks, that have the manpower, that have the experience delivering aid.  Then in between you know, the port and the hungry people are a hundred different checkpoints often, landmines, you know, pirates, militant groups and there’s just a lot of challenges to actually get the aid from the port to the people who need it.

WERMAN:  In other words, the number of potential windows of fraud that that food aid has to pass through are really unknown.  We just don’t know essentially what happens to it once it gets to the port.

GETTLEMAN:  No and some of this is really a cost of doing business.  It would be impossible to hope that all the aid would get to the people who it’s intended for, without some of it being you know, siphoned off by the various actors along the way.  Some of these militant groups like the Shaba, which is a hard-line Islamic group that’s chopped off hands and stoned people to death and has lynched Al Qaeda, they demand payments at the checkpoint.  They might say, hey give me a couple packs of grain so I can sell it in the market for money or so I can use it to eat it so to get the aid through, there’s often, you know, often some of that aid disappears and this isn’t unique to Somalia.  This is true in many consoled zones that if you want to get the aid to the people who need it, you have to play ball with the authorities on the ground.

WERMAN:  The U.N. Security Council study that you reported on today will be presented publicly to the Security Council next Tuesday.  What follow up will there be?

GETTLEMAN:  I think people are going to put pressure on the U.N. Security Council to make more specific action to either open up more investigations into the WFP operations, the World Food Program operations, maybe to hire outside contractors to come in and monitor the aid convoys to make sure this food is getting to where it needs to go.  I think there’s also going to be a lot of criticism and more scrutiny on the Somalia government because it’s basically, the world feels, the Western world feels they don’t have an alternative to the transitional federal government right now and therefore they have to support these guys, no matter what.  Well, this report indicates there’s a lot of corruption going on within that government and there’s going to be some questions raised and then you have this ongoing piracy issue where it looks like some local Somali officials are helping the pirates and there’s going to be a lot more pressure on them to crack down on piracy because it’s really becoming a menace to global trade.

WERMAN: Jeffrey Gettleman, East Africa correspondent for the New York Times.  Thank you very much.

GETTLEMAN: Glad to help.

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• BBC coverage

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MARCO WERMAN:     I’m Marco Werman.   This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Exactly 25 years ago, famine gripped Ethiopia.   Few could forget the images of emaciated children, their bellies bloated, and their parents starving and desperate.   In the decades that followed, the nation on the horn of Africa seemed to put that crisis behind it.  But now, a quarter of a century later, Ethiopia may be slipping back into a food emergency.   Today, the Ethiopian government announced it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.  The crisis stems from a prolonged drought that’s afflicting the region.  BBC correspondent Mike Wooldridge witnessed Ethiopia’s famine in the mid- ’80s.  Now he’s back.  And Mike, you are aware it all started 25 years ago right now.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE:  I am indeed.  I’m in the town of Mekele up in the highlands of northern Ethiopia which, along with Quorem, was really the epicenter of that famine and some of the most iconic images and sounds of that famine 25 years ago, came from here.

WERMAN:  Well, we’ll talk in a moment about what’s changed in Mekele and Ethiopia and the current famine that’s unfolding there, but first you mentioned sounds that you heard 25 years ago.  This is actually sound you gathered 25 years ago to the day.

WOOLDRIDGE:  It’s too late to save the lives of many of the people around me here in a corrugated iron shelter on the outskirts of Mekele.  A middle aged man who’s just died in front of me.  His grieving daughter at his side has now lost most of her family in this famine. A few minutes ago, we came across a small bundle in another corner of the shelter which contained the body of a boy of four or five.  He was one of six children whose mother died last week.  Two more children died here this morning.  Here at a Red Cross feeding center for the most severely malnourished children, Nurse Clare Birchinger says it’s heartbreaking to have to send so many needy children away.

CLARE BIRCHINGER:  For the 500 we take, there’s thousands we can’t take and that’s terrible, really terrible.

WERMAN:  Mike Wooldridge, that was such a dire time.  You’re back there in Mekele now.  How have things changed?  I mean, the civil war is over, but how much has life really changed there?

WOOLDRIDGE:  Well, physically, life has changed enormously.  Here in particular, this really was just two or three parallel main streets when I was here with just dusty side streets, but today ,this is a bustling town, a lot of new buildings here.  It’s seen a lot of development.  But that famine of 1984, `985 is of course deeply embedded in the memories, particularly of people here, and particularly of people in Quorem because they saw so much suffering, they saw so much death.  But alongside that, I’ve had people saying to me these past few days, “We don’t want these two places to be remembered only as places of suffering and death.  We also want them to be remembered as places where lives were saved,” because of course, eventually, an unprecedented aid operation got under way and at least bringing together air forces from western countries and from the Soviet bloc of the time to work together, because Ethiopia was very much caught up in a kind of proxy part of the Cold War.  An extraordinary aid operation that did succeed in saving many lives.  So all of that really feeds in to the psyche of people, and particularly in this highland part of Ethiopia today.

WERMAN:  And yet the Ethiopian government today says it needs emergency food aid for over 6 million people.  The World Food Program says $285 million for relief food is needed for the next six months.  What or who is to blame for the current crisis?

WOOLDRIDGE:  I think climate change, if you want to call it that, is most certainly one of the factors, but it’s not the only one.  In a way, the factors that were there right back in 1984 and in the previous famine in 1974, are still at play.  The farming landscape here has been very degraded, high populations. And that population has now doubled in Ethiopia. It’s at least 75 million people here now, doubled since 1984, trying to farm the land. So you’ve got that, you’ve got the climate change, you’ve got the environmental factors and some would say you’ve got political factors too, to do with the government’s land policies and so on, which don’t necessarily give farmers the incentives that they might have to grow, though the government denies that.

WERMAN:  I was in Addis Ababa in 2005, 20 years on from Live Aid, the big concert organized by Sir Bob Geldof as a response to the TV pictures that you and Michael Burke brought back. And the conclusion of a lot of the people I spoke with was that the government was simply holding out for more debt relief, and just not focused on these rural areas where a lot of these crises occur.  The humanitarian group, Oxfam, is today calling for a new approach for tackling the risk of disaster in Ethiopia.  Are they referring, do you think, to some of these considerations in the capital?

WOOLDRIDGE:  They may well be, but in a way, Oxfam are pointing to what the government would say that it is signed up to itself.  It would say that its strategy now is very much about reducing the chronic vulnerability of so many people in the rural areas.  Now others might say that that could have progressed much further with different kinds of government policies.  All that’s arguable, but certainly, just about everybody here does talk the language of reducing vulnerability.  Oxfam today is calling it “disaster risk management,” but Oxfam have also got a message for the donors and actually particularly for the United States, because much of the US aid here is still in the form of food aid brought from the United States.  And Oxfam is saying that while, particularly at the moment, food aid is necessary and save lives, the concentration should not be so much on that.  There should be a shift, so that much more in the way of resources, donor resources, private investment too no doubt, is put into helping communities, these rural communities, so hard pressed so often, withstand these what will be probably ever more frequent shocks because of climate change.

WERMAN:  The BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in the Ethiopian town of Mekele.  Thank you very much indeed.

WOOLDRIDGE:  And Marco, thank you very much too.

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• 2005 Niger food crisis
• Niger country profile

Grains market at the border between Nigeria and Niger