REPORTS

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

 Children, the elderly and the rest of North Koreans outside major
cities continue to suffer from serious shortages of food, medicine and
other essentials. There is little likelihood the situation will improve in
the near future. It is likely to get worse before it gets  better.

 I am satisfied, however, that this campaign to attract world
attention and bring action to the plight  in North Korea has succeeded. So
we will now take a back seat.

 In 1995 when the worst flood in North Korea's history  in the past
century  devastated its  farmland, made a half a million people homeless
and threatened the nation's food supply, we opened this Home Page to
attract world attention and began collecting donations which we used to
purchase and personally distribute food and clothing there. Indirectly we
hope we helped to move larger organizations and nations to also open their
hearts to the  plea for help.

 In the early days following this disaster all but a few countries
in Europe  ignored the suffering there--simply because North Korea was not
a very popular country. The U.S. only provided a token donation of $25,000;
Japan sent a shipful  or two  of rice and then stopped while  South Korea
did the same. Later South Korea threatened to punish any citizen or
organization which  donated funds or goods to North Korea other than
through their Red Cross which manipulated the donations with their
political agenda.

 On our Home Page we berated the U.S. for its strict control of
donations, including the Treasury Department's blocking of our U.S. bank
account; we chided Japan for sitting on (and not donating)  millions of
tons of surplus rice which would never be consumed and was fated to rot,
and we urged South Koreans to practice civil disobedience and answer the
call for help from  their starving brethren. This was done on the basis of
a higher law, natural law, that inspired St. Thomas Aquinas, Mahatma Gandhi
and Martin Luther King to march to their own music which eventually became
everyone's music.

 I believe with the worldwide fast day and the massive aid now
pouring into North Korea from all over--albeit through imperfect monitoring
facilities--our own mission is accomplished.  Although our own donation
program was  but a drop in the bucket, we succeeded in drawing attention,
raising awarenesss and getting people to act.

 Last week we forwarded a donation of $500,000 in medical equipment
from the Michigan-based Christian Association for Medical Missions  to  the Third Hospital in Pyongyang and the General Hospital in Huichon via  the vessel Mangyongbong that left Niigata for Wonsan on April 22. We now await word it got there as we did not accompany the donation.

  We still have on hand some $20,000 in cash donations we had planned
to use to purchase more rice and medical equipment but have decided instead
to turn it over to a particular project which UNICEF has set up in North
Korea to provide vegetable seeds and agricultural instruments for
nurseries, kindergartens and  orphanages to grow their own food. This will
have a more beneficial long-term effect, to provide stable food supplies to
children and avoid malnutrition, than continuing imports of food. We are
satisfied this project will provide more value for the money we would
otherwise use in distributing imported rice only part of which we could
monitor.

  $15,000 will be sent by bank transfer  this week to Mr. Runar
Soerensen, the UNICEF representative in Pyongyang, and he will use this
along with other funds for this project. He will monitor it and report to
us, through this page on its use and  provide photos.  An exchange of
recent correspondence with UNICEF officials appears elsewhere on this site.

 We will continue to accept contributions for North Korean relief
and whenever a sum accumulates to $10,000 we will forward it to this UNICEF
project in North Korea and keep you periodically informed about it on this
page. This channel of contributions will enable donors to track their
donations and see the result of their generosity which is rarely the case
when one contributes to charity.  The transparency may encourage some
donors to channel their donations through this appeal.

 I personally will no longer visit North Korea to distribute food
and goods, and will entrust UNICEF to use our donations for their good
cause.

Bernard Krisher
Chairman
Internet Appeal for North Korean Flood Victims