Posted on 01/27/2005 3:29:09 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
BEIJING (AP) - The World Food Program on Thursday appealed for 500,000 tons of aid to feed 6.5 million North Koreans this year, warning that the North still faces severe shortages as world attention focuses on helping tsunami survivors.
North Koreans' ability to feed themselves has been hurt by soaring prices as the communist government opens private markets in an effort to diversify its economy, the U.N. agency said.
"Millions of children, women and elderly people are barely subsisting because they lack both the quantity and quality of nourishment they deserve," the WFP's director in North Korea, Richard Ragan, said in a statement by the agency.
North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed many of its 23.7 million people since its state-run farm system collapsed in the mid-1990s.
The latest WFP appeal comes as tsunami relief efforts receive hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
"The aid pie is limited, and donors have been very generous in their response to the tsunami appeal," said Gerald Burke, a WFP spokesman in Beijing. "But they also always have been very generous to WFP appeals for North Korea, and we sincerely hope this appeal will be fully met."
Efforts to attract donations for North Korea have been complicated in the past by tensions over its nuclear program and competing needs for aid in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Despite the nuclear tensions, North Korea's main donors have been the United States, Japan and rival South Korea - all participants in the six-nation talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon nuclear development.
North Korea's grain crop is expected to rise by 2.4 percent this year to 4.24 million tons - its biggest in a decade but still far below the 5.13 million tons needed, WFP said.
Two-thirds of North Koreans depend on government rations that supply just nine ounces of food a day, "enough to meet only half their calorie needs," the WFP statement said.
WFP stockpiles of food in the North should last through June, the statement said.
"But without additional pledges soon, the kind of distribution cuts that have plagued our operation over the past three years, depriving millions of vital assistance for long periods, will be inevitable," Ragan was quoted as saying.
The agency said the secretive North Korean government still bars WFP employees from visiting 49 of the North's 203 counties and districts, home to about 17 percent of its population. The agency doesn't distribute food in areas that its staff can't visit.
Those targeted for aid this year include 900,000 elderly people, as well as children, pregnant women and some 360,000 people who no longer can afford food as a result of economic reforms, the agency said.
AP-ES-01-27-05 0619EST
U.N. now U.D.,......United (Islamic) Dictatorships?
The UN and it's enablers have turned half of the World into self perpetuating tyrannies that cannot survive without the continuous soaking of the Free Countries....I hate to see people starve, but it's worst is to see them starve for generations ala "Palestine" and Africa.
Teach them to fish!
How does our feeding the N Korean get rid of KIm Il Jung?
If they get hungry enough they might overthrow him, as long as we feed them ,he claims the food is coming from him and stays in power. I know damned well when these people get food they arent being told it is coming from the US Japan and S Korea.
The people starving is sad, however Kofi this problem needs to be handled with kim jong il, not the US. He's the maniacal dictator who only cares about himself. Sounds to me like Kofi is trying to find another Oil for food scandal to keep himself in business.
According to this story, the reason the people are starving is economic reforms. At least, that's the way the story reads. However, haven't they been starving for some time? Even prior to the economic reforms? If we've been sending them food, then why are they starving? Why isn't their government taking care of them? Or is the UN in need of feeling useful?
I hate to be crass, but the tsunami victims are suffering through no fault of their own. The same can't be said of the North Koreans. All one has to do is look across the border to S. Korea to see what the problem is...a lack of FREEDOM. Hummmm...I think that's exactly what the President was speaking about at the inauguration.
This isn't a US problem. If NK cannot feed its people, maybe they should consider dismantling their armed forces and putting them to work on farms and in other food producing functions.
I've heard there are increasing incidents of cannibalism in North Korea, maybe we'll get lucky and the starving people will eat Kim Jong Il.
Hey, it's not quite as bad as sh*t on a shingle.
Meanwhile, Kim Il Jung continues to grow fatter.
Hey, it is "shit on a shingle".
Thanks. That '*' key keeps slipping. Heh.
North Korea can take a lesson from the collapsed Soviet Union. Communism doesn't work. You can't spend money on weapons and social problems at the same time with this form of goverment/economics anywhere, anytime.
I don't like Kim, but I don't want to make 6.5 million people suffer from hunger and starvation in order to make a political point.
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