North Korea faces potential food crisis, U.N. agency warns

Food prices at North Korean markets have doubled while state rations are dwindling, the World Food Program said. And key aid donors such as China and South Korea are not expected to send as much direct assistance to the North as they have in the past.

“The food security situation in the (North) is clearly bad and getting worse,” Tony Banbury, Asia regional director for WFP, said in a statement. “It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy.”

North Korea’s annual food deficit is expected to nearly double from 2007 to 1.66 million tons, according to U.N. projections.

Jean-Pierre de Margerie, WFP’s country director in North Korea, said by telephone from Pyongyang that North Korean officials were admitting for the first time that the state ration system — already erratic in providing food to the country’s 23 million people — was breaking down.

In some of the 50 counties where the agency operates, officials have told WFP that they were reducing rations or suspending them altogether, de Margerie said.

“It’s a bit of a perfect storm shaping up,” he said.

Markets are a way that many North Koreans try to compensate for the insufficient rations, when possible.

However, prices of key staple foods have doubled in the past year in the capital. For example, a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice now costs about one-third of a typical worker’s monthly salary of 6,000 won (about US$2; euro1.25 at unofficial exchange rates), WFP said.

In another blow to the food situation, direct aid from North Korea’s two top donors — China and South Korea — is also expected to decline this year.

Due to rising food prices, China has restricted its exports and is not expected to send as much to its communist ally as in the past, de Margerie said.

South Korea has a new conservative president who has said he expects North Korea to reciprocate for aid, a change from the previous decade of liberal South Korean governments. The new policy has angered Pyongyang, which has claimed it doesn’t need Seoul’s help.

Already, the South has not sent its usual annual fertilizer donation to the North, which is expected to cause a decrease in this year’s harvest, de Margerie said.

WFP is also not feeding as many people as it once did.

The U.N. agency drastically cut back its operations in 2006 at North Korea’s request, going from feeding more than 6 million people to 1.1 million people. The move was believed motivated by the reclusive North bristling at the monitoring requirements that required foreign aid workers to travel the country and observe food handouts.

WFP said an estimated 6.5 million people were short of food, and the number could rise if shortages were not addressed.