A New Food Crisis Plagues N. Korea

The U.N. World Food Program is launching a new appeal for food donations for North Korea, an agency official said Saturday, warning that dwindling supplies were forcing it to cut off aid to children and the elderly in the isolated country.

WFP received supplies in recent months that let it feed 6.5 million North Koreans, but those are running out, WFP’s Asia director, Anthony Banbury, said at a news conference after returning from a trip to North Korea.

“Unless we get new contributions in the next weeks, we’re going to face serious cuts,” he said.

WFP already has stopped giving vegetable oil to 900,000 elderly North Koreans and will cut back supplies to schoolchildren next week, Banbury said. The oil is a source of nutrition for people whose only other food might be corn porridge and acorns.

The North has relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people since a famine in the mid- 1990s and the collapse of its state farm system after decades of mismanagement and the loss of subsidies from Moscow.

The North’s government also has been forced to cut supplies given out at its own food distribution centers, Banbury said. He said daily rations there had fallen from 10 1/2 ounces of grain -- already considered less than necessary for survival -- to 8 3/4 ounces.

The communist nation’s creation of private markets has done little to help most North Koreans feed themselves because prices have risen beyond the reach of many families, Banbury said.

With salaries at many state companies equivalent to $1.30 per month, a bottle of vegetable oil at a market can cost up to two months’ pay, he said.