An unusually long spell of drought is devastating crops and threatening drinking water supplies in vast regions of Northeast Asia, from the Korean peninsula to China and Mongolia.
The drought, the worst in decades in many areas, is parching maize and other spring crops and withering rice seedlings planted for the fall harvest. Rice is the staple food in one of the world's most populous regions.
The problem is believed to be manageable for China and South Korea. But for destitute North Korea, the impact could be immediate and far-reaching.
The drought may force North Korea's aid-dependent communist regime to seek even more outside aid. Since 1995, it has received US$1.6 billion worth of outside aid, including US$500 million from South Korea, to feed its 22 million people.
More ominous is an assessment by South Korean weather officials that such a dry spell could become a long-standing problem.
"We see a possibility that this kind of drought can be an annual phenomenon in the coming three or four years," said Park Chung-kyu of South Korea's Meteorological Administration.
The dry spell, Park said, is caused by an extremely hot atmospheric condition over northern China that blocks the northward movement of wet, low-pressure fronts from the south.
Global warming in the past 20 years is also to blame, he said.
Park's analysis would be particularly grim for North Korea, which suffered a deadly famine in the late 1990s because of bad weather and mismanagement.
North Korea received a nationwide average of 1.8cm of rain between March and June, only 11 percent of the average annual precipitation, said the North's foreign news outlet, KCNA.
"No harvest can be expected from hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland hit by drought, and it's hardly possible to sow seeds there again," KCNA said.
Although the rainy season is expected in a week, South Korea also is fighting its worst drought in a century in the midst of an economic slowdown. This week, it mobilized a fifth of its military for drought relief.
The 130,000 troops were dispatched to 90 hard-hit regions, armed with drilling machines, trucks, excavators and pumping motors to dig wells or draw water from reservoirs.
Since March, South Korea has received a nationwide average of only 9.3cm of rain, less than one-third its usual rainfall for the same period.
In an appeal to conserve water, President Kim Dae-jung said he has stopped taking baths in favor of light showers.
"I even feel like I could hold a traditional ritual and pray for rain," Kim said. "I look up at the sky and hope for rain every day."
In old Korea, kings held shamanistic rituals praying for rain when drought struck. Kim said he can't do it because people may think he is irrational.
In China, drought is especially severe in the north, where half the population lives.
Officially, this year's drought is worse than last year's, and in some areas it is the worst since the founding of the communist state in 1949.
RSS