North Korea's chronic food shortage has worsened to affect even some of the country's elite citizens in Pyongyang, a South Korean aid group said yesterday.
The communist nation has not given rice rations to medium and lower-level officials living in Pyongyang, the capital city, this month after cutting the rations by 60 percent last month, the Good Friends aid agency said in its regular newsletter.
Pyongyang citizens are considered the most well-off in the isolated, impoverished country, where the government controls most means of production and operates a centralized ration system. Only those deemed most loyal to Kim Jong-il's regime are allowed to live in the capital.
PHOTO: EPA
The food situation is more serious in rural areas, with residents in many regions in the country's South Hwanghae province living without food rations since November, the aid group said.
Some collective farm workers in those regions have not come to work citing the lack of food, and their absence is causing problems with farming preparations in the spring planting season, it said.
Good Friends, a group that sends food and other aid to the North, declined to specify where it had obtained the information, saying it has to protect its informants. Some of the group's previous reports of what was happening inside North Korea have later been confirmed.
The World Food Program has warned that North Korea could face the worst food shortage in years, after severe floods swept through the country last summer, destroying more than 11 percent of the country's crops.
A US State Department humanitarian expert visited South Korea earlier this week to discuss the food situation in North Korea, the US Embassy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said on Wednesday that there have been discussions about food aid to the North but that no decision had yet been reached. Casey also reiterated that any US food assistance was unrelated to the ongoing negotiations to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
North Korea has relied on foreign assistance to feed its 23 million people since the mid-1990s, when its economy was hit by natural disasters coupled with the loss of the regime's Soviet benefactor. As many as 2 million people are believed to have died of famine, exacerbated by a centrally controlled agriculture sector saddled with outdated farming methods.
South Korea was a main food donor for the North when the country was under two successive liberal presidents for the past decade. But conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office last month with a pledge to stop sending unconditional aid to the North.
Lee has said he would continue humanitarian assistance to North Korea, but would seek to get more in return.
Apparently mindful of the leadership change in the South, the North has not made its annual request for rice and fertilizer this year.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS