UN agency to send 1st food aid to north Korea

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) will send a first batch of emergency food aid to North Korea, where a series of deluges and a typhoon killed nearly 120 people and left more than 84,000 others homeless last month, the agency said. In a statement published on its website, the United Nations aid body said the emergency assistance will provide the flood victims in the destitute country "with an initial ration of 400 grams of maize per day for 14 days." It did not say when the food would arrive in North Korea. According to reports from the United Nations and Pyongyang's official (KCNA) news agency, storms and downpours have caused severe flooding in a wide area of the country, and have destroyed more than 45,000 hectares of farmland. A United Nations mission which recently visited the affected regions found considerable damage to maize, soybean and rice fields, the WFP statement said. A comprehensive assessment of the food situation and of prospects for food production is scheduled for September, it said. Since the mid-1990s, North Korea's agricultural sector has become increasingly vulnerable to floods and drought as a result of widespread deforestation. A recent UN report classified 7.2 million of the country's 24 million population as "chronic poor", and said one in three children suffered from poor nutrition.