Six million Koreans face starvation

Published on Friday 25 March 2011 15:04

More than six million people in North Korea urgently need food aid because of substantial falls in domestic production, imports and international aid, the United Nations has said.

In a report providing a rare glimpse into the reclusive communist state, where a famine in the 1990s killed an estimated one million people, three UN agencies said North Korea's public distribution system would run out of food at the beginning of the lean season that runs between May and July.

The agencies, which visited North Korea for a month between February and March, said the country had suffered a series of shocks in recent months, leaving it "highly vulnerable to a food crisis" and threatening a quarter of its 24 million people.

The report will add pressure for the full resumption of international food aid to North Korea amid a stand-off with the West over Pyongyang's nuclear programmes and accusations North Korea was behind two attacks on South Korea last year.

Pyongyang has asked the United States to resume food aid, suspended in 2008 over a monitoring row.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Food Programme and Unicef recommended providing 434,000 tonnes of food aid for 6.1m people. Children, women and the elderly were among the most vulnerable to malnutrition.