15% Of N. Koreans Could Be Starving Chinese, Russian Visitors Tell Of Bodies Uncollected In Streets

An informal survey conducted for Korean-American organizations has found that about 15 percent of people in North Korea’s towns and villages may be dying of starvation and famine-related diseases, an official of the international relief organization World Vision said Sunday.

The North Korean government was not informed of the survey, which was carried out by ethnic Koreans living on the Chinese side of the China-North Korea border who can travel freely into North Korea. About 400 North Koreans and some Chinese and Russian citizens who recently traveled to North Korea were questioned.

They told stories of unclaimed bodies being collected from village streets and coffins being reused to save wood.

The results of the survey are to be made public in New York today by Andrew Natsios, vice president of World Vision, which has relief programs in North Korea.

“Fifteen percent is a huge famine,” Natsios said in a telephone interview Sunday from his home in Washington. “And the thing that’s alarming is that those three provinces on the Chinese border where the survey was conducted are ones where the World Food Program has found that people are the best fed.”

Natsios, a former head of U.S. government relief programs during famine crises in Africa, said that if these figures are reflective of the national picture, as many as half a million North Koreans may have died of starvation and famine-related illnesses in a population of about 22 million.

Natsios, who visited North Korea in June, said he believed that the famine’s effects were being worsened by the collapse of the national transportation system, which makes distribution of what food there is difficult.

World Vision, one of a handful of American-based private relief organizations working in North Korea, is recommending that Washington press China and Japan to give the North Koreans more food aid. Those organizations are also asking the secretive North Korean government to allow relief experts and reporters to travel freely in the country, especially to remote areas.