North Korea trying to resume full-scale distribution of food

North Korea is stepping up efforts to resume full-scale food distribution across the country, a sign the food situation in the communist nation is improving, a UN relief agency said.

"Government plans to revive the public distribution system are becoming more apparent, although steps in this direction do not seem to be happening uniformly across the country," Richard Ragan, the World Food Program's (WFP) country director, said in a Friday-dated report on the agency's Web site.

North Korea has relied on outside handouts to feed its 22 million people after natural disasters and mismanagement caused its economy to collapse in the mid-1990s. Famine has killed an estimated 2 million people.

Pyongyang scaled back food rationing in July 2002 and introduced an economic reform program under which wages were raised and farmers' markets were expanded so that people could buy food. The reform measures failed, however, as inflation soared amid shortages of food and other goods.

WFP, which has a presence in the North, reported late last month the totalitarian country planned to ban cereal sales at the markets and resume full-scale rationing across the country as of Oct. 1.

"WFP is seeing more and more examples of the implementation of the new government policy to ban cereal sales in the markets," and move toward state distribution, the agency said.

WFP it had monitored food rationing at a government distribution center in North Hwanghae province where people were "lining up with newly printed ration cards and the warehouse was full with locally harvested maize and rice as well as rice received from the Republic of Korea."

Republic of Korea is South Korea's official name.

Food provides every citizen with a ration card that allows them to buy cereals at state distribution centers for low prices. WFP said the size of the ration had not been finalized.

"Some counties distributed 300-500 grams per person per day for the first two weeks of October, while most counties held that ration sizes would not be determined until after the harvest has been completed," WFP said in its report.

Last month North Korea asked international aid groups to stop all emergency humanitarian aid by year's end, saying it had enough food from other sources, including South Korea. Instead, the North said it wanted long-term development assistance to help the country feed itself.

The Rome-based World Food Program has been feeding an average of 6.5 million North Koreans during the last several years. It has said it would end a decade of emergency food shipments by January and focus on development projects.