U.N.: N. Korea faces food crisis

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea faces a looming food crisis due to floods last year, the U.N. food agency said.

Food prices at North Korean markets have doubled while state rations are dwindling, the World Food Program said Wednesday.

Key donors such as China and South Korea are not expected to send as much direct assistance to the North as they have in the past.

"The food security situation in the (North) is clearly bad and getting worse," Tony Banbury, WFP Asia regional director, said in a statement. "It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy."

Jean-Pierre de Margerie, WFP's country director in North Korea, said by telephone from Pyongyang that North Korean officials were admitting for the first time that the state ration system -- already erratic in providing food to the country's 23 million people -- was breaking down.

"It's a bit of a perfect storm shaping up," he said.

Prices of staple foods have doubled in the past year in the capital. A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice now costs about a third of a typical worker's monthly salary of 6,000 won (about US$2), WFP said.

In another blow to the food situation, direct aid from North Korea's two top donors -- China and South Korea -- is also expected to decline this year.

Due to rising food prices, China has restricted its exports and is not expected to send as much to its communist ally as in the past, de Margerie said.

South Korea has a new conservative president who has said he expects North Korea to reciprocate for aid, a change from the previous decade of liberal South Korean governments. The new policy has angered Pyongyang, which has claimed it does not need Seoul's help.

The WFP cut back its operations in 2006 at North Korea's request, going from feeding more than 6 million people to 1.1 million. The move was believed motivated by the reclusive North bristling at the monitoring requirements that required foreign aid workers to travel the country and observe food handouts.

WFP said an estimated 6.5 million people were short of food, and the number could rise if shortages were not addressed.

The agency is in talks with the North Korean government and donors as it deliberates whether to launch a new emergency feeding program, de Margerie said.

Since the 1990s North Korea has suffered regular food shortages caused by natural disasters, mismanagement and the loss of the country's Soviet benefactor. As many as 2 million people are believed to have died from famine. E-mail to a friend

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