Flooding forces North Korea to evacuate 5,000

Torrential downpours caused the rain-swollen Yalu River on the North Korea- China border to overflow Sunday, prompting the evacuation of 5,000 North Koreans who remained “at the crossroads of life and death,” according to state-run news media there.

In Sinuiju, a North Korean riverside town across from the Chinese city of Dandong, flash floods submerged houses and farms and paralyzed roads as the military was deployed to aid survivors, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.

Storms, flooding and mudslides have lashed parts of China for the last week, causing widespread death and forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to flee to higher ground.

After heavy rains pelted the border region late Saturday with nearly a foot of precipitation, the Yalu overflowed. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il sent in air force and navy units to rescue residents of the northwestern city, KCNA said.

Photographs and video released by the agency showed a nearly submerged Sinuiju and surrounding villages as isolated residents awaited rescue by military helicopters.

Authorities built a dike around low-lying downtown Sinuiju, but in 1995 a similar dike was breached and the city was flooded, according to the Daily NK newspaper.

“As a result, the river swelled in a minute, leaving even Sinuiju City inundated. This paralyzed traffic and did damage to many objects,” KCNA said. “The flood victims were at a loss on the rooftops of buildings and hills.”

In a secretive society where news coverage of internal events is severely limited, the prompt release of images showing suffering citizens is North Korea’s way of calling for international aid, analysts say.

In past years, massive flooding has killed hundreds in North Korea, a nation of 23 million people, prompting the government to seek foreign assistance.

But South Korean officials said they had yet to decide whether to send any. Tensions have been high since a South Korean navy ship sank in March, killing 46 crewmen. A South Korean investigation blamed a North Korean torpedo; the North denies firing one.

On the Chinese side of the Yalu, known as the Amnok in North Korea, four people died when rising waters swept them away. Dozens of townships were inundated after weekend floodwaters punctured a dike between the river and an economic development zone, according to Chinese state media.

Chinese authorities said they evacuated 253,000 people in Liaoning province because of flooding around the Yalu. More than 100 people were rescued by helicopter.

By Saturday night, the water levels in Dandong rose to the highest level in a decade and the second-highest since record-keeping began in 1934. Dandong is fortified by a 10-foot-high flood wall made of sand and wooden planks that was sealed off Saturday morning to contain the Yalu.

Residents said the water had begun to recede by Sunday.

“Water didn’t come into our hotel because we’re located on the higher ground,” said Cao Yue’e, 29, a receptionist at a Dandong hotel. “Our hotel was closed for two days. The water is said to have reached one person’s waist.”

Another hotel receptionist said the flooding “in North Korea is really, really bad. It is the worst flood for the past 50 years.”

On Sunday, a 23-year-old woman gave birth at a Dandong hospital after the provincial governor sent a helicopter to her rescue. She had been stranded inside her rural home waiting for midwives amid heavy flooding.

“I never thought my daughter could be born in this way,” she told the New China News Agency. “If not for the emergency rescue, we both could have died.”

john.glionna@latimes.com

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Glionna reported from Seoul and Demick from Beijing. Ethan Kim in The Times’ Seoul Bureau and Nicole Liu and Tommy Wang in the Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.