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North Korean food crisis worsens daily
Aid not coming fast enough
April 28, 1997
Web posted at: 10:50 a.m. EDT (1450 GMT)From Correspondent Mike Chinoy
PYONGYANG, North Korea (CNN) -- Pyongyang is a city with few cars and even fewer shops -- a city of buildings without heat and, at night, with virtually no electricity.
Yet the people here are the lucky ones. The United Nation's World Food Program says the residents of North Korea's capital are getting about 450 grams -- about four bowls -- of rice a day. Not much, but it is enough to carry on a semblance of normal life.
Outside Pyongyang, however, life is anything but normal. On vast areas of farmland devastated by three consecutive years of flooding, nothing is growing. The food distribution system is breaking down.
Aid agencies say many rural people are getting just 100 grams -- one bowl of rice -- a day. Some are surviving on bark, roots and grass. Relief workers say millions of North Koreans are slipping into a nightmare of malnutrition, disease and death.
It is a humanitarian disaster of vast proportions, one that prompted the usually reclusive North Koreans to appeal to the international community for help.
"Potentially, if the situation remains unchecked, we could be looking at one of the biggest humanitarian disasters of our lifetime," Catherine Bertini, the executive director of the WFP said in a statement on Monday
"The window of opportunity to avert famine is rapidly closing and could already have closed," Bertini said. "The real issue facing us is not whether there will be famine but how many people will actually die."
This disaster is so great, North Korean officials told CNN, that a few thousand tons of aid won't be enough. The WFP in Pyongyang estimates that the country needs well over a million tons of grain just to survive until next fall's harvest.
And there is no guarantee that sufficient aid will arrive. The United States and South Korea are trying to lure Pyongyang into peace talks with promises of help. But the North Koreans say they won't negotiate unless massive food aid is delivered first.
And even if help does come, the food crisis is unlikely to disappear. No longer propped up by its one-time socialist patrons in Moscow and Beijing, the North Korean economy is at a standstill. Factories are idle. There's no fuel for trucks to reach the worst-hit areas. And hospitals have run out of medicine.
As always, it's the children and the elderly who are faring the worst.
But even the North Korean army -- the pillar of the regime and, along with the ruling party elite, the most pampered sector of North Korean society -- is feeling the pinch. Aid agencies say the daily grain ration for soldiers has been cut from 900 to 700 grams.
It's a paltry diet, but enough for the armed forces to continue to function. And, as North Korea sinks deeper and deeper into misery, it's significantly more than what ordinary people are getting.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- North Korea: Hungry and poor, but proud - April 25, 1997
- North Korea sets conditions for peace talks - April 24, 1997
- S. Korea: Defector says N. Korea has nuclear weapons - April 22, 1997
- Korean peace talks collapse - April 21, 1997
- Top North Korean official defects - February 12, 1997
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