Widespread Hunger Feared in North Korea
By BRUCE WALLACE,
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 yesterday, 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 ranging from rice and potatoes have soared 25% during the last three weeks in the capital, Pyongyang, a bastion for the regime's loyalists.
"Local officials are openly asking us for support, something we've never seen before," the head of the World Food Program's North Korean operation, Jean-Pierre de Margerie, said in a telephone interview from Pyongyang. "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."
