N. Korea Using Wood To Stretch Food Supply

Food warehouses in North Korea are nearly empty and officials are adding ground-up wood to rations of rice and corn to make supplies last longer, a foreign aid worker reported Tuesday.

Kathi Zellweger, who just returned from the communist state, said she saw hungry children too weak to stand, hospitals that can’t feed patients and other signs that North Korea’s food crisis is “heading toward a disaster if nothing is done.”

Unless food aid is delivered by June or July “we will have a full-blown famine with mass starvation, and possibly also refugees heading toward China and South Korea,” said Zellweger of the Caritas aid agency.