An executive of the UN’s food agency was yesterday visiting South Korea to seek its help in feeding hungry North Korea, days after relations soured further over the killing of a tourist from Seoul.
Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the World Food Programme (WFP) country director for North Korea, will meet Seoul officials to brief them on a just-completed assessment of food needs in the North, said WFP regional spokesman Paul Risley.
He said that de Margerie would also ask Seoul to contribute to a greatly expanded food program by the UN agency, which aims to feed approximately 5 million people.
The US is providing 500,000 tonnes of food aid, 80 percent of it through the WFP.
The hardline communist North faces acute food shortages this year following floods which badly damaged last year’s harvest and amid rising international commodity prices.
But it has cut off official ties with South Korea’s new conservative government and rebuffed an offer of 50,000 tonnes of corn in bilateral aid.
Relations worsened further last week when a North Korean soldier shot dead a housewife who strayed into a military zone when on holiday at the Mount Kumgang resort.
The WFP announced last month it had received Pyongyang’s permission to expand its aid to more than 5 million people — out of a total population of 23 million — from the 1.2 million currently being helped.
Risley said the needs assessment “gives precise information of the nature of shortages and the level of response needed” but declined to give details.
The Peterson Institute, a US think-tank, believes the North is again facing a humanitarian emergency, even though it is unlikely to reach the magnitude of the 1990s famine when between 600,000 and 1 million people died.
The WFP said in April that aid is urgently needed “to avert a serious tragedy.”
South Korea, with a US$20 million contribution, is the second largest donor to the WFP’s current program, which ends on Aug. 31.
The UN is appealing to the current donors to help fund its expanded operation.
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