North Korea's food shortages are expected to worsen this year due largely to floods that swamped tens of thousands of hectares of farmland earlier this summer, a South Korean expert said Wednesday.
Kwon Tae-jin, a senior researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, said in a telephone interview that he expects the North's grain harvest this year to be about 200,000 tons less than last year.
The impoverished communist state produced 4.1 million tons of grain last year, according to estimates of the South's state-run Rural Development Administration. Kwon estimated heavy rains that pounded the North from mid-July to early this month led to the loss of 37,000 hectares of farmland, citing news reports from Pyongyang.
"The direct damage from the flooding is expected to be 100,000 tons," he said, also blaming factors such as blight, low temperatures and a lack of fertilizer for the expected drop.
North Korea normally tallies up its grain production from September to October with the help of international relief agencies. The country, which is believed to need at least 5.2 million tons of grain each year to feed its
23 million people, has relied on international handouts since the mid-1990s when a massive famine, aggravated by natural disasters, swept the country.
Following heavy floods that concentrated in northwestern North Korea last month, South Korea's Red Cross offered to send aid worth 10 billion won (US$8.5 million), including emergency food that excluded rice. The North's Red Cross, in a reply to the offer, requested that the staple be sent along with cement and excavators.
South Korea's unification minister, Hyun In-taek, said in a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday that his government was considering allowing rice to be shipped, in an apparent sign that it was easing its hard-line stance on
sending aid to the North.
Hyun, however, noted that the aid would be humanitarian and aimed at helping the North recover from its flood damage. South Korea has been cautious in sending aid to North Korea since tension heightened between the sides over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March. Forty-six sailors died in the tragedy that Seoul blames on a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang
denies any role in the sinking.