UN warns of hunger, malnutrition in N Korea

ISN SECURITY WATCH - The UN food security agency, World Food Program has cautioned that spiraling food prices and the collapse of North Korea’s economy has created a new class of people who are unable to buy food. “What we have got is a chronic problem,” Richard Ragan, WFP’s country director in Pyongyang, told reporters in Beijing. “The country is chronically short of food,” he said. Ragan said that not only does North Korea not produce enough food to feed everyone, the food prices have skyrocketed, leaving many in the country without enough purchasing power to buy basic staples necessary for survival. “A huge percentage of North Korea’s 20 million people remain hungry,” he told reporters. North Children and the elderly are the most vulnerable, Ragan said. Destitute parents turn their children over to orphanages, often hoping to take them home a few months later. “Orphanages are still a common coping mechanism for people who are suffering food shortages,” Ragan said. Japan, Russia, the US, and several other countries have pitched in to help North Korea deal with the growing food crisis. Beginning in September, the World Food Program says it will have enough food to meet the needs of some 6.5 million people for the rest of the year. Earlier this year, the agency had to cut back its food aid to more than 4 million people because of a lack of donations from abroad. The agency has already begun working on securing donations for next year. “We kind of live hand to mouth,” the WFP representative said. Korea’s experiment with capitalism following the collapse of its state-run economy in the 1990s is proving costly, and Pyongyang has been unable to keep a check on unwieldy market prices. Ragan said that while the country waits for the fruits of economic reform to trickle down to the general population, international assistance must be stepped up over the next few years in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. The cost of rice has jumped from 130 won (about US$1 at the official exchange rate in local banks) per kilogram last year to 700 won (over US$5) a kilogram this year. And there has been no accompanying increase in average wages - which have remained stagnant at 2’000 won (about US$26) per month - to absorb the increasing food prices. A US dollar fetches about 130 won at the banks, while on the black market the rate is closer to 1’600 won to US$1. North Korea has been promised financial and food assistance if it dismantled its nuclear program. Six-nation talks on the dismantling of the country’s nuclear program are tentatively scheduled for September, but North Korea announced earlier this week that it might back out of preparatory meetings due to Washington’s “hostile” attitude. (By Ravi Prasad in Colombo)