North Korean Economy Watch

From the BBC:

About 60,000 people have been left homeless by recent flooding in North Korea, according to the UN food agency.

The floods have also destroyed 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of farmland, causing the loss of 100,000 tonnes of food, the World Food Programme said.

On Friday North Korea’s official media admitted that “hundreds of people” were thought to be dead or missing after last week’s torrential rain.

The North already relies on outside aid to support its impoverished people.

Food aid from neighbouring South Korea is currently suspended after talks between the two sides collapsed last week, in the wake of Pyongyang’s 5 July missile tests.

South Korea has also been hit by the seasonal storms, with around 60 people dead or missing after last week’s rains.

Vulnerable population

The World Food Programme said it would initially help 1,300 people in the worst-hit region of South Pyongan, providing 74 tonnes of food.

According to the agency, the government is still trying to assess the situation, but “overall, the updates indicate rising levels of damage”.

North Korea has relied for more than a decade on foreign donations to feed its people.

The WFP began working in the country in the mid 1990s, after about two million people died from famine.

According to the most recent large-scale survey in October 2004, the WFP found that 37% of young children were chronically malnourished, and one-third of mothers were malnourished and anaemic.

from the BBC:

Hundreds are dead or missing in North Korea after days of heavy rain, according to state media.

Torrential rain has swept through the Korean Peninsula in recent days, causing flooding and landslides both sides of the border.

This is the first confirmation from Pyongyang that the severe weather has led to human casualties.

On Wednesday, state news agency KCNA said flooding had caused “tremendous” economic losses.

The Red Cross said in a statement on the same day that 100 people were dead or missing and entire villages had been swept away.

“This heavy rain left hundreds of people dead or missing in many parts of the country,” KCNA said in its latest statement, although it did not give specific figures.

Tens of thousands of houses have been destroyed and infrastructure such as roads and bridges has been badly hit, the agency said.

The worst damage was in central and eastern parts of the country. In South Pyongan Province, about 6,200 houses and 490 public buildings were damaged and large tracts of agricultural land under water, KCNA said.

Damage to farming land would be a blow for North Korea, which has in the past experienced severe food shortages caused by natural disasters and outdated agricultural methods.

Food aid from neighbouring South Korea is currently suspended after talks between the two sides collapsed last week in the wake of Pyongyang’s 5 July missile tests.

South Korea has also been hit by the seasonal storms, with around 60 people dead or missing after days of rain.

From Reuters 7/20/2006 (via Korea Liberator):

Floods could push North Korea back into famine
Jon Herskovitz
7/20/2006

North Korea, constantly battling food shortages, could be tipped into famine after heavy flooding this month in key farming regions hit its potato and rice crops, experts said on Thursday.

Two major storms over the past 10 days have hit the impoverished country with some of the heaviest rainfalls in years just as it faces greater international isolation over missile tests this month and the prospect of less food aid from its major donor, South Korea.

“Conditions have never been that good in North Korea and this could push them over the edge again,” said Peter Beck, an expert in Korean affairs for the International Crisis Group.

“This has increased the probability of a famine returning to North Korea,” he said.

Up to 2.5 million North Koreans, or about 10 percent of its population, died in the 1990s due to famines caused by droughts, flooding and mismanagement of the agriculture sector, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said studies have indicated.

Anthony Banbury, director of the WFP’s Regional Bureau for Asia said the floods hurt the potato crop, which is used as a filler until the rice crop comes in.

The floods will also likely hurt rice production and come with the North already short of fertilizer.

“There is a real risk that this combination of factors is going to have a very negative impact on the food security situation in the coming months,” Banbury said by telephone from Bangkok.

He said Pyongyang’s main benefactor China probably shipped North Korea far less food in the first quarter of this year than it did in the same period of last year.

South Korea has sent huge amounts of rice and fertilizer aid to North Korea over the past several years. But it has rejected the North’s latest request for 500,000 tons for rice for this year, unless Pyongyang returns to stalled talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs.

Beck said if North Korea faces a real humanitarian crisis, it would be difficult for South Korea and other countries not to donate food.

Even in a good year, North Korea’s harvest falls about 1 million tons short of its needs, experts have said.

FLOODING IN RICE BASKET

The Red Cross said floods struck North Korea’s South Pyongan province and Hwanghae province. Both surround the capital Pyongyang and are part of the country’s rice basket.

“Extensive areas of arable fields have been inundated, wiping out much of the anticipated harvest,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said this week.

South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok told reporters on Thursday that Seoul is sticking by its decision to suspend food aid for now. He added South Korea will still push for peaceful engagement with its neighbor.

Ties between the two Koreas, which have warmed considerably in recent years, have been severely tested by the missile tests. North Korea stormed out of a cabinet-level meeting last week after Seoul pressed Pyongyang to explain why it defied international warnings by firing seven missiles on July 5.

Severe winters keep North Korea to a single food producing season that runs from June to October.

Even then, it has a difficult time raising food because of outdated and dilapidated farm equipment, energy shortages and a lack of fertilizer and pesticide.

from the Joong Ang Daily:

After North Korea began a capitalist experiment by adopting economic reform measures in 2002, incentive payments have become common at communal farms, following the lead of factories in urban areas. After the North Koreans quickly grasped the essence of capitalism ― the more they work, the more they earn ― productivity at North Korean farms has increased, and some workers have become the rich in a famine-stricken country.

Paek Kun-su, a 72-year-old farmer at the Chilgol Farm near Pyongyang, met with the JoongAng Ilbo on May 14, during a trip to the North by a team from the newspaper, which was allowed to tour a large number of economic sites last month.

Chilgol Farm is one of North Korea’s representative state-run farms, the authorities there said. After Mr. Paek developed a new variety of rice that yields more with less fertilizer, he was given 15 million North Korean won ($100,000) as a bonus. That was an extravagantly large sum in the North, where a public servant with 30 years of service receives a monthly salary of 6,000 won. A North Korean worker at the Kaesong Industrial Complex receives about $60 a month, and even that is higher than the average salary in the North, so Mr. Paek’s windfall was worth about 160 times that figure.

Mr. Paek said his rice variety, called only “Number Six” in a bow to socialist realism, yielded more than 4 tons per acre in last year’s crop. He also stressed that the new rice variety requires less fertilizer than the ones it replaced and is resistant to attacks by insects. “It can be planted where the temperature is low,”Mr. Paek said. “It can be planted anywhere on the west coast of Korea and anywhere south of Kilju, North Hamgyong province, on the east coast.”

Those claims, however, may require some caution in accepting. For example, the average rice yield in the United States is estimated at about 3.5 tons per acre; the figure in Korea is 2.2 tons.

Mr. Paek said he introduced the new rice variety at a national science and technology fair on May 5. He was selected from more than 50,000 participants as the grand prize winner.

He said he was once a director at North Korea’s rice research institute, a part of the Academy of Science for Agriculture. During his career as a scientist, he said, he won six awards, including medals and a television set, but never a cash prize.

“I am very happy to contribute to increasing crop production in our country and helping resolve food shortages here,” he said, adding that he began developing the new strain of rice in the mid-1990s, after seeing large number of his countrymen dying of hunger.

Mr. Paek’s windfall is out of reach for almost all North Koreans, but many farmers do seem to enjoy better living conditions after the incentive payment system was established. At the Chongsan Cooperative Farm in South Pyongan province, Ko Myong-hee, a 46-year-old manager, said farmers there are living in stable conditions. The JoongAng Ilbo toured the farm on May 14.

Ms. Ko said the farm’s 600 workers produced 8,000 tons of rice in addition to other crops, vegetables and fruits. The farm has about 1,470 acres of rice paddies and 980 acres of fields and orchards. (The difference between that farm’s rice output and Mr. Paek’s claimed yields is startling.)

North Korean farms usually complete their harvest in October, and the government purchases the crops. Milled grains are purchased at 40 won per kilogram, and raw grain at 20 won per kilogram.

Ms. Ko said the Chongsan Cooperative Farm’s workers each received an average of 500,000 won in cash last year in addition to the food they consumed. The incentive payment translates to about 40,000 won per month, about eight times higher than the salary of a Pyongyang office worker. A factory worker in the North with high skills can earn as much as 20,000 won per month, including incentive payments.

“During the famine of the mid-1990s, production went down sharply, but we managed to survive,”Ms. Ko said. “Recently, we improved our crop varieties and the quality of farming land, and production went up after that.”

An official at the National Reconciliation Council, which arranged the visit, said farm villages had suffered relatively less from the severe famines of a decade ago. “Those who had relatives in farming villages received a lot of help from them back then,” he said.

With slowly improving farming conditions, North Korea began last month a revived campaign to mobilize the nation’s workers for agriculture. Another National Reconciliation Council official said a similar campaign last year was successful; “Students older than 12 years and other laborers were mobilized to support farms in this rice planting season,” he said.

North Korea has been living on foreign food aid for more than a decade, and the country is struggling to end its perennial food crisis. “We have high pride, and you can imagine how bad the situation used to be when we asked the international community to help us,” the National Reconciliation Council official said. “But we cannot live on foreign aid forever.”

The country focused on building irrigation waterways to improve farming conditions, officials said. During the JoongAng Ilbo’s visit to the Academy of Agricultural Science, it saw 2,600 researchers working to develop more productive and hardier seeds and more effective fertilizers. The seed improvement project largely focuses on rice and potatoes, the academy said.

“We aim to reach 8 million tons of annual food production by 2007,” a researcher at the academy said.

Ri Il-sop, the science exchange director at the academy, said rice farming in the North used to employ “dense planting” methods until recently, but a test of “thin planting” has been conducted with new varieties of seeds. “The test has been successful so far,” Mr. Ri said. “We can farm easily and save seed with the new methods.”

Another senior researcher at the academy, Pak Sok-ju, said providing information about land conditions and weather is also an important project of the academy. He said other necessary data include things such as the length of the planting season around the nation and the effects of fertilizer usage. “We are developing the program to find a new way of farming in the information age,” Mr. Pak said.

While the North Korean government has called such efforts “an agricultural war,” experts in South Korea said the famine-stricken country still had other crucial tasks at hand. An energy crisis and a shortage of farming tools and fertilizer are crushing burdens, they said, adding that mobilizing manpower and improving seed quality cannot alone resolve the underlying problems in keeping North Korea from being able to feed itself.

any letters I missed in that title?

From the Korea Times:

WFP Asks South Korea to Contribute Food to North
By Christopher Carpenter

A representative of the United Nations World Food Program said on Friday that South Korea was considered a potential donor in the new North Korean food aid program.
At a press conference in Seoul, Tony Banbury, the WFP’s regional director for Asia, said he met with officials Friday at the South Korean Ministry of Unification and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade about contributing to the program.

“Our discussions were very positive,’’ Banbury said. “They are ongoing and I think I’ll leave it at that.’’

Bae Young-han, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that while he could not confirm the meeting with Banbury, South Korea was discussing participating in the WFP effort.

“In the past, we contributed through the WFP channel,’’ Bae said.

Banbury came to Seoul on the heels of signing a letter of understanding with Pyongyang Wednesday to resume aid to the North. It was discontinued in December 2005 when North Korea asked that food aid be replaced with developmental aid.

Banbury said assistance will not be on the scale it was when they left North Korea last year, but that the assistance being provided was better than discontinuing the program completely. Around 1.9 million people will benefit under the new agreement, down from the 6.5 million the WFP was feeding when it left in December.

“The alternative to this was closing down the operation entirely and walking away,’’ he said.

The new program will provide three types of assistance. Roughly half of the 150,000 tons of food that will go to the North over the next two years will be designated for pregnant and nursing mothers, and for babies that are younger than six months of age.

Primary aged school children will receive daily packages of enriched biscuits that provide 75 percent of their daily vitamin and mineral requirements. Finally, communities involved in projects that will increase their ability to produce food will be rewarded with food aid.

“As they do the work, we will pay them in food,’’ Banbury said.

The new program, which Banbury said the North considers a transitional program that will lead to development aid, allows the 10 WFP staff who will be in North Korea to monitor the food distribution system.

The staff will have access to the institutions where food is being distributed, to the community development projects, to areas of the country that may need further assistance and to the logistical operation that brings food into the country and stores it.

Banbury said the WFP would strictly enforce its monitoring policy of “no access-no food.’’

While Banbury said North Korean officials never admitted they needed emergency food assistance, the WFP offered to increase the scope of the program if it were wanted.

“That’s a conversation we might continue in the future,’’ he said.

From the Washington Post:

After a government-imposed shutdown of more than four months, the World Food Program announced Thursday that it would resume food aid to hungry North Koreans, but on a sharply reduced scale.

Tony Banbury, the U.N. agency’s regional director for Asia, said he signed an accord with the government in Pyongyang that will allow 10 staff members to operate a $102 million feeding program, helping 1.9 million of the neediest North Koreans over the next two years.

The accord, reached Wednesday after prolonged negotiations, ended the uncertainty that has prevailed since the DPRK government announced in August that it would accept development aid but no longer wanted food aid. That forced the World Food Program, which runs North Korea’s main feeding operation, to halt work at the end of December.

Banbury called the new agreement “an important breakthrough” for North Korea’s undernourished poor. But he said the number of people receiving food would drop considerably under restrictions laid down by North Korean officials — from 6 million in 163 counties under last year’s $200 million-plus program to 1.9 million in 30 counties under the new program.

“They explained this by saying they needed less food, that their crops were getting better and that they did not want to create a culture of dependency,” Banbury told reporters during a stop in Beijing.

Because Kim’s government is highly secretive, its assertion that more food aid was unnecessary could not be verified, Banbury said. But he expressed skepticism, noting that North Korea recently sought 500,000 tons of grain from South Korea and in recent years has consistently produced nearly 1 million tons less than its annual requirement of 5.3 million tons.

Economic reforms that began in 2002 have gradually loosened North Korea’s rigidly Stalinist system and injected some life into the economy, according to reports from Pyongyang. In particular, private food markets have been allowed in recent years, providing previously unheard-of choices for those with money. Food prices soared, however, prompting farmers to sell their crops in the private sector rather than to the public distribution system at controlled state prices. This in turn made life harder for the poorest among North Korea’s 23 million people, who rely on public rations.

In response, the government announced recently that the public distribution system would resume its monopoly on food grains. How this step ties in with the economic reforms was not explained. But Banbury said the agreement to resume U.N. food aid suggested that North Korean officials realized the public distribution system could not get food to everyone who needed it despite their earlier assertion that it was time to move on to development aid.

Production and distribution of U.N. food aid will resume immediately, he said, but it will take several weeks to get operations up to speed. As it was previously, most of the food aid will be in the form of vitamin-enriched biscuits for children, enriched porridge mixes for infants and supplements for pregnant women and the elderly.

Although the number of staff members has been shaved from 48 to 10, Banbury said U.N. officials would be able to verify that the food was going to the poor and not government officials or the military. Diversion of food has been a major concern of the United States and other U.N. donor countries since Kim proclaimed that soldiers and other officials have priority in North Korea.

“We will not be providing food to any areas of the country where our staff does not have full access,” Banbury said.

From Yonhap:

A U.S. human rights organization on Thursday urged North Korea to allow international monitoring of food distribution, saying its recent policy changes on outside aid may cause renewed hunger among its people.

Recent decisions by Pyongyang to suspend the operations of the World Food Program in the country and revive the food rationing system may leave many in hunger, said Washington-based Human Rights Watch in a press conference in Seoul.

“North Korea has gone back to precisely the same place, when the famine began,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of the organization, referring to the mid 1990s in which two million North Koreans supposedly died of hunger.

North Korea adopted a series of policies last year that irked international human rights organizations. It asked the U.N. relief agency to end emergency food aid and its monitoring in September and then announced the reinstatement of the public distribution system, in which the government provides rationing of food and equipment to individuals.

Citing interviews with North Korean defectors and World Food Program officials, the rights watchdog said the food rationing system operates on a priority basis, feeding Workers’ Party members and military and police officers while leaving many ordinary people in hunger.

Despite its improved harvest in recent years, North Korea still suffers from a chronic food shortage, it said, with the country needing approximately 6 million tons of grain a year to provide basic nutrition for its 22 million people.

The North’s grain production hovers at 4.5 million tons and it receives 750,000 tons in aid from South Korea and China, but still falls short of demand, the organization said, citing statistics from the South Korean government.

It urged Seoul to strengthen the monitoring in the North to make sure the needy people get the food.

South Korea shouldn’t “simply passively accept that it is inevitable that North Korea cannot be influenced,” Malinowski said.

North Korea experts in Seoul, however, said the recent decisions by the communist country suggest it is making efforts to stand on its own rather than depend on emergency donations. And the revival of the public distribution system illustrates its improved food situation, they said.

“When the rationing system was reduced (in the late 1990s) it was because the government didn’t have food to distribute. Now that it has expanded the rationing system, it is in a better situation,” said Chon Hyun-joon, senior research fellow with the Korea Institute for National Unification, a public research body on North Korea in Seoul.

From the Korea Times:

A delegation from the South Korean Catholic Church left for Pyongyang early Wednesday to tour regions in the North it has provided with humanitarian assistance, the Archdiocese of Seoul said.

The 61-member delegation from the Seoul archdiocese, led by Monsignor Choi Chang-hwa, will take field trips in and around Pyongyang until Saturday, it said.

“This is the first time a Catholic delegation has traveled to North Korea on such a large scale, and with laymen included,” Ma Young-ju, an archdiocese’s public relations official said.

Pyongyang sent an Air Koryo plane to Incheon International Airport to pick up the delegation, Ma said.

The Seoul archdiocese has provided food and equipment worth 11 billion won ($11.6 million) since it started assisting in the midst of a deepening food shortage in the North in 1995.

It helps operate flour factories in Nampo and Shinchon on the North’s west coast and provides 1,200 tons of flour annually, according to the archdiocese.

According to the Manilla Times and ABS/CBN Interactive:

North Korea could suspend food rations for ordinary citizens in Pyongyang next month due to its worsening famine, a South Korean aid group warned Sunday.   The North Korean capital has had a better food supply than other areas despite a chronic food shortage since the 1990s.

“Pyongyang is no longer a safe zone in food supply,” Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group for North Koreans, said in a newsletter.  “Food supply officials in Pyongyang say food rations lasted only 10 days in April and will be suspended for ordinary citizens beginning in May,” the group said. The aid group said big businesses and state organizations would remain unaffected.

United Nations food aid to North Korea ended late last year after Pyongyang said it no longer needed emergency shipments from the World Food Program (WFP) and other international humanitarian agencies. The North Korean government said it instead wants development assistance and a smaller operation with fewer international staff whose monitoring activities would be restricted.

WFP has proposed a downsized aid plan to feed 1.9 million people, largely women and children vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. It used to feed 6.5 million people.

North Korea’s grain production rose 5.3 percent to 4.54 million tons last year, still far short of its annual demand of six million tons, South Korea’s unification ministry report says.

According to the Daily NK:

North Korean sources have claimed that since April only some areas of Pyongyang have gotten food rations, and local areas were already cut off. North Korea recently relaunched rationing on the Workers’ Party Foundation Day (10/10/2005), yet from the beginning, the program did not meet its objectives, and furthermore, from this spring even Pyongyang is seeing a shortage of food.

Mr. Kim, who is a North Korean trader and now stays in Dandong, China said, “Officials working at the central agencies (the Party, Ministries, Court) in Pyongyang have gotten rations, but workers in general factories and small companies in local cities have to resolve their April and June food prooblmes themselves.”

Mr. Kim stated, “Despite a severe shortage of food, some wealthy, powerful people are persisting well. Yet other people who rely on the food rationing of factories mainly go to local areas to exchange goods for food.” It led to a situation where North Koreans have to withstand starvation by all means, before new potatoes come out.

At the same time, price of rice at the Jangmadang 9farmers markets) began rising.

Rice prices at the Shinuiju Jangmadang are:

1,000W ($0.33) to 1,200W($0.4) per 1kg
Yongcheon rice  is 1,200W 1kg
Chinese rice is 900W($0.3) to 930W($0.31) per 1kg

Corn is 300W($0.1) to 400W($0.133).

Shinuiju rice is a little more expensive than that of other cities, and its wheat flour is cheaper. It is because rice comes in from other cities, and Chinese wheat flour is distributed to each city via Shinuiju. 

Mr. Lee hinted that travel permits to China are issued “conditionally.” That is, after visitors to China come back to North Korea, they have to offer some food to the National Security Agency, and people with no relatives have a harder time getting passes.

Mr. Lee said, “As for me, it is better because I found my older brother. However, other people living in our village go out to rivers to dig for gold and to mountains to dig for edible plants.”

March and April, called the ‘Barley Period (Borigogae)’ are the months when food crunches are most severe. This is when the crops and edible plants (side dishes) harvested last year begin to run out. When edible plants run out, North Koreans prolong their lives by eating grass or wild plants. However, because of death by starvation in the mid 90’s, which resulted in massive foraging, even wild plants like bracken are not easily found now.  

From the Times of London:
3/9/2006
Michael Sheridan

ALL baby triplets in North Korea are being removed from their parents and placed in bleak state orphanages where they are fed by foreign aid.

The policy has prompted concern among diplomats and aid officials, who have witnessed sets of babies kept in special “triplet rooms” in orphanages across the country.

“There is no doubt that the policy is compulsory and universal,” said a seasoned diplomatic visitor to North Korea who has seen the rooms. He said he had not noticed family members visiting the children in his many calls at the orphanages. Conditions when foreigners are allowed to enter appear to be spartan but clean, according to several witnesses.

Food supplies to orphanages are a priority for both the United Nations relief agencies and the North Korean authorities. Local officials have assured inquirers that the babies are being given privileges to relieve their parents of the anxiety of feeding three mouths while the impoverished Stalinist nation endures an eighth year of food shortages.

But diplomatic experts who understand the Korean language and culture cast doubt on the official explanation.

They believe the true reason is linked to some of the most bizarre aspects of Kim Jong-il’s dictatorship. The number three is auspicious in Korean mysticism and triplets are revered for exceptional good fortune. Some believe they may be destined for power and great achievements, which would account for the regime’s desire to keep them under observation.

Diplomats and international aid officials also doubt that poverty is the explanation, because not even triplets born to high-ranking party members are exempt. “It may be officially atheistic and Stalinist but essentially North Korea operates a state religion infused with superstition, astrology and a personality cult which glorifies Kim as a unique individual,” said the veteran diplomat. “You don’t take any chances with rivals in that system.”

Power conferred by blood descent is also important in Korea’s Confucian tradition. The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was rebuilt by its communist rulers along principles of Chinese geomancy, with “power lines” linking the purported birthplace of the previous dictator, Kim Il-sung, with the purported tomb of Tangun, founder of the Korean race. As heir to the world’s only communist dynasty, the younger Kim exploits every such tradition to exalt himself, while keeping a careful watch on his clan network of intermarried army and party men.

Children of the elite are usually taken from their parents by the age of two and placed in party-controlled schools to break family bonds and to consecrate their devotion to Kim. Foreign observers believe the triplets are kept together and transferred to these schools when old enough.

The segregation of triplets has provoked debate among UN aid agencies and non-governmental organisations delivering help to North Korea.

Although there appear to be no reasons to fear for the physical safety of the triplets, regular visitors to North Korean orphanages report desperate scenes of isolation and sadness.

On a recent visit a member of a foreign delegation entered a room to see infants placed several to a cot, all rocking backwards and forwards.

“Our people were stunned into silence,” the delegate said. A paediatrician outside North Korea who assessed evidence collected on the visit diagnosed severe emotional trauma.

Witnesses said they had noticed better nursing attention and care for triplets in the special rooms. “But none of those infants knows what affection is,” said one visitor. “Our staff try to cuddle them for a few minutes but then, of course, we have to leave.”

Up to 300 sets of triplets a year are believed to be born in North Korea. In an official statement to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, North Korea said: “Triplets are supplied by the state free of charge with clothing, bedding, a one-year supply of dairy products and a pre-school subsidy, and special medical workers take charge of such mothers and children and care for their health.”

The UN’s World Food Programme has reported a sharp improvement in children’s health in North Korea thanks to foreign aid. Since 1998 cases of acute malnutrition in children under seven have fallen from 16% to 9%, and the number of underweight children has decreased from 61% to 21%.

As tension mounts between North Korea and the United States over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, however, aid officials fear that any military clash could put at risk their ability to feed the children.

There is little doubt of the regime’s cold-hearted approach to paediatrics. In 1998, Médecins sans Frontières pulled out of North Korea, alleging that aid agencies were denied access to so-called 9-27 camps in which sick and disabled children had been dumped under a decree issued by Kim to “normalise” the country.

UN agencies are still arguing for access to closed districts in the northeast of the country, where prison camps and military facilities are located.

From the Seoul Times:

WFP’s governing Executive Board has approved a two-year plan to build on the agency’s ten-year record of humanitarian assistance to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by tackling nutritional deficiencies and chronic hunger.

Valued at US$102 million and requiring 150,000 metric tons of commodities for 1.9 million North Koreans, the plan aims to provide vitamin-and-mineral enriched foods produced in-country to young children and women of child-bearing age, and cereal rations to underemployed communities to build and rehabilitate agricultural and other community assets.

Several members of the Executive Board expressed strong concerns about the restrictions on monitoring and access that the DPRK government has imposed. These include a reduction in the number of international staff from a peak of 46 to just 10, and a reduction in the number of monitoring visits from approximately 400 per month to a much more limited number.

“We now look to the government of the DPRK to agree to conditions that will allow us to do our work properly, for the sake of the people who need our help.” “If we cannot reach a suitable final agreement on our operating conditions, we will be forced to withdraw,” Morris told the Executive Board members.

Past WFP operations mobilised more than four million tonnes of commodities valued at US$1.7 billion, supported up to one-third of the population of 23 million, and contributed to a significant reduction in malnutrition rates.

While in years past WFP’s resources were spread across all accessible counties – 160 out of 203 for much of 2005 – the new operation envisages a more focused approach, with 80 percent of the food going to the 50 most vulnerable counties.