North Korea never become
self-sufficient: UN food chief
BEIJING-North Korea, where millions have
been hit by starvation and malnutrition, may never become
self-sufficient in food, the top United Nations food official
said here on August 21, 2001. North Korea will need to improve
its economy drastically to earn the hard currency to buy food
overseas, but even that prospect is a long way off, said World
Food Programme executive director Catherine Bertini "There are
many agricultural experts who do not believe over the long term
that North Korea can be self-sufficient in food," she said at a
press conference in Beijing after returning from North Korea.
She said there was "no crime in not being self-sufficient," but
that North Korea must follow the example of other countries with
the same problem and find the money to purchase food elsewhere".
It seems that it is critical for there to be improved
economic development in the country, and one of the reasons for
that is so the country can afford to be able to purchase food to
feed its own people," she said. "That in the short term,
however, will not be the case, and for the foreseeable future --
at least for the next few years -- even with improved harvests,
even with good weather, there will be a need for food aid."
Bertini said that a visit to a paediatric hospital in Nampo, the
port city Cich serves the capital Pyongyang, came as as a
reminder of how precarious the situation still is. The 140
children at the hospital had been without rice-milk blend for
several days due to a breakdown in the local transportation
network, and many were suffering from diarrhea, she said. "The
children were very lethargic. Many were crying if they had the
energy to cry," she said. "We saw no evidence that children were
dying, but I cannot say that they are not. The state of some of
the children in the paediatric hospital was such that it
certainly is possible that children would die," she said.
This year's harvest was badly hurt by a dry spell lasting from
March until June, making the crop yield smaller than originally
hoped, Bertini said.
North Korea is taking small steps
towards higher agricultural output, such as increased use of
fertilizer -- mostly donated by South Korea -- and a more
diversified crop production, she said. "These are all actions
that are being taken within the country, but together they will
not make up for the shortfall required for the very, very basic
food needs of people in the country," she said. "There is no
significant improvement in terms of the country's ability to
feed itself between 1997 and today," she said. Despite the
gloomy outlook, a visit to an orphanage, also in Nampo, where
"almost all" of the 180 children had looked healthy, suggested
that there had been some improvement due to foreign food aid,
she said. The World Food Programme, which has provided aid to
North Korea for the past six years, now reaches about 7.6
million people, or about one-third of the country's population
of 23 million. It has called for a record 810,000 tonnes of
international aid to help feed North Koreans this year, and has
so far found more than 90 percent from donor nations such as the
United States, Japan and South Korea.
