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Food crisis continues to dog N Korea

The collapse of North Korea's economy has caused food prices there to skyrocket and created new groups of people who can't afford to buy what they need to live, the UN World Food Program said yesterday.

While the UN agency now has enough food for its distribution projects, many in North Korea are still hungry, said Richard Ragan, the WFP's country director based in Pyongyang.

"What you've got is a chronic problem," he told reporters at a briefing in Beijing. North Korea is "chronically short of food."

Starting next month, the World Food Program will have enough food to feed its target of 6.5 million people for the rest of the year and beyond, following new shipments from Japan, the US and Russia among other countries, he said.

That's a sharp shift from earlier this year, when the agency had to cut food aid to more than 4 million people because donations from abroad weren't coming in, he said.

But the agency is already working to line up foreign food aid for next year, he added. "We kind of live hand to mouth."

Further, a huge percentage of North Korea's 20 million people remain hungry, he said.

"They don't produce enough food to feed everyone," he said.

Meanwhile, the market price for food is shooting higher as the country experiments with capitalism following the collapse of its government-driven economy, he said.

Rice has surged to 700 won per kilogram compared to 130 won per kilogram last year, while the average wage has stayed steady at just 2,000 won a month, he said.

North Korea's won trades at an official rate of about 130 won per US dollar and unofficially at about 1,600 won per US dollar, he said.

Since the government's food rations aren't enough to live on, "people are being forced to go into the market sector," Ragan said. "As the economy shifts, there are winners and losers."

Among the winners, more people are now allowed to make money, whether it's by binding brooms or making straw mats or selling charcoal, he said.

Many of the entrepreneurs are women who have presumably been laid off by money-losing government factories first, he added. "I've never seen a man in a commercial stall or kiosk."

While farmers still have to meet grain quotas, they can also make money on the side, Ragan said. They can sell their surplus, or a wheat farmer might sell his chaff to a pig farmer as animal feed.

The fitful shift to a more market-based system has created new groups of vulnerable people, such as urban residents who have no access to land or other means of generating income, he said.

Children and the elderly are the most vulnerable of all, he added. Destitute parents still drop off their children at orphanages, often with the hopes of picking them up again after a few months, he said. "Orphanages are still a common coping mechanism for people who are suffering food shortages."
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