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Ton-a-Month Club Tackles North Korean Starvation

By Louis Arana, Stars and Stripes Seoul Bureau, April 26

SEOUL — Tim  Peters knows that the ton of grain he buys and sends to North Korea each month won’t feed many of the starving people there.

Peters is a volunteer American Red Cross caseworker at Yongsan Garrison and a missionary in Seoul. He said Pyongyang officials often stop aid workers from getting food to where it’s needed. That angers him.

"Millions of people could be dying," he said. "I can’t sit by and not help just because there’s a chance that some of the food will be diverted."

So Peters has started a grassroots push, the Ton-a-Month Club, to help the country’s relief agencies trying to get food to the hungry. His aim is to get members to buy one ton of food each month to send to the North.

Peters takes $200 a month from his family budget to help. With each shipment of grain, "I also send a prayer so it will fall into the right hands," he said.

He said his club has only a handful of members, but they manage to send four tons of food to North Korea each month. "We’re just scratching the surface, but even a little bit can go a long way," he said.

He added that he hopes the Ton-a-Month Club’s effort will encourage others to help.


Nozomi Akiyama, 18-year-old missionary exchange student and "Helping Hands/Korea" volunteer, makes the official presentation of a check for over $14,000 to Mr. Kang, president of the Korean National Red Cross. Timothy Peters appears at far left.

The Buddhist Sharing Movement, based in Seoul, said in a report last month that since August 1995, the famine has killed about three million North Koreans.

Peters said his efforts are not a political statement. "I just felt a personal responsibility to see if I could alleviate some of the suffering. There are children, elderly and handicapped people dying on the vine up there," he said. "We must do something to help them."

About 80 percent of the club’s food gets into North Korea, he said. The other 20 percent is payment to North Korean border guards for passage.

It bothers Peters that the North Korean military might get some of the grain. "It’s a dilemma anybody with a conscience fights," he said.

But Peters can’t stop sending food.

"We do the best we can in a very difficult situation to relieve suffering," he said, "and we pray desperately that it won’t fall into the wrong hands."


With sore feet, but smiles on their faces, youthful members of "Helping Hands/Korea" show little fatigue after completing four days of an East-West Goodwill March together with other concerned members of the community and the Korean Red Cross. Over $14,000 was raised to aid North Korean children, the elderly and handicapped, all of whom are suffering greatly from the widespread famine in their country.