A third of North Korean women and young children are malnourished and the country will run short of almost 1.8 million tonnes of food this year, a UN relief agency report said yesterday.
The latest UN assessment said the country will need close to this amount from imports or assistance “even to meet the most basic food needs of the 24 million North Korean population,” the World Food Program (WFP) country office said.
Its report appeared in a magazine on the North’s economy published by Seoul’s Korea Development Institute. WFP press officers could not immediately be reached to elaborate on it.
“Nutritional surveys ... show that 37 percent of children under five are malnourished and one third of women are malnourished and anemic,” WFP said.
Women regularly give birth to underweight babies and fail to breast-feed adequately because of malnutrition.
The report said child malnutrition was evident in nurseries, kindergartens and schools outside Pyongyang, with children much shorter and lighter than their South Korean peers.
“Many sit listless and quiet in their chairs or on the floor, too tired and low on energy to run around and play like children should, a heart-wrenching sight even for the experienced humanitarian aid workers,” it said.
The WFP, operating in North Korea for 14 years, said it had been forced to cut food aid there due to dwindling international assistance.
It said only 1.3 million North Koreans were receiving food support in July, just 20 percent of the 6.2 million originally planned, and the WFP’s current food stocks would run out in November.
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