UN: Millions suffer food crisis in N. Korea

[October 23, 2008]  SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The U.N. food agency said Thursday that millions of North Koreans face a food crisis, but a South Korean official said that Seoul has not decided whether to respond to a request for food aid to the communist country.

"Some areas of the northeastern provinces in the country ... have become extremely vulnerable, facing a situation of a humanitarian emergency," Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the WFP's country director for North Korea, said at a forum on North Korea.

Around 2.7 million people on North Korea's west coast will also run out of food in October, the WFP said in a report released Tuesday.

The food shortages have forced many North Koreans to go to hills to collect wild food to complement their daily rations and reduce the number of meals per day to two, said de Margerie.

Asked if North Koreans face starvation, he said his agency hasn't seen any evidence of starvation but said, "We have reached (a) very critical level and we shouldn't wait for another starvation before ringing the alarm bells."

North Korea has relied on aid to help feed its 23 million people since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its centrally controlled economy in the mid-1990s. Famine is believed to have killed 2 million people. The country's food shortage has worsened this year following devastating floods in 2007.

The WFP also said the food shortages have especially affected urban households in areas with low industrial activity due to higher food prices, reductions in public food rations and lower employment.

The food shortage warning comes as the North has ratcheted up its hostile rhetoric against South Korea and its president amid fraying ties.

In August, the WFP asked South Korea to provide emergency aid to North Korea to help it avert a food crisis, but Seoul has not yet responded.

The South Korean government said it would not tie food aid to North Korea's nuclear disarmament, but it also said public opinion was a consideration in deciding whether to send aid.

On Thursday, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said no decision had yet been made.

De Margerie said he plans to meet South Korean officials on Friday and renew his agency's appeal for the North.

"Donor countries should back us up ... Now is (the) time to act," de Margerie said.

South Korea has been a main aid donor to its impoverished northern neighbor, but public sentiment has worsened following the July shooting death of a South Korean tourist at a North Korean mountain resort.

North Korea had previously rejected South Korean offers of direct food aid in apparent anger over the new South Korean government's harder-line policy toward the North.

The North warned Seoul last week that it might cut any remaining ties between the neighbors if South Korea continues its policy of "reckless confrontation."

On Wednesday, South Korea denied it had taken a hard-line stance toward the North, calling that view "preconceived or biased."

[Associated Press; By KWANG-TAE KIM]

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