North Korea food crisis is expected to worsen

TOKYO – The ravages of floods and soured diplomacy have turned North Korea’s chronic food shortages into an imminent humanitarian crisis, the World Food Program warned Wednesday, declaring that the secretive dictatorship will require massive food aid in the coming months if it is to avert widespread hunger.

The U.N. agency projects that North Korea’s food shortages will be double last year’s deficit. Prices on food items such as rice and potatoes have soared 25 percent over the last three weeks in the capital, Pyongyang.

“Local officials are openly asking us for support, something we’ve never see before,” said the head of the World Food Program’s North Korean operation, Jean-Pierre de Margerie. “They are telling us that they are going to have to suspend distribution in some places because there simply is not enough food in the system.”

The North Korean government has so far made no request to widen the existing WFP effort that is feeding or supplementing the nutrition of about 1 million people in the country of 23 million.

Shriveling food stocks follow massive flooding last summer, which washed away soil and crops in the country’s rice and maize-producing “Cereal Bowl.” North Korea’s own statistics show the rice harvest fell by a quarter, while maize production was off by a third.

Human rights organizations say that sources inside North Korea report increasing absenteeism from factory jobs in some provinces, with workers no longer able to survive on government handouts and scrambling to earn money elsewhere.