Heavy Rain Damages Crops and Homes in North Korea
Date: 03-Aug-04
Country: SOUTH KOREA
Floods and erosion on overused hillsides in 1995 tipped chronic malnutrition into a famine that aid experts say killed more than one million people and still leaves its mark on the impoverished communist state.
KCNA said this July, the rainy season on the divided Korean peninsula, downpours had flooded or washed away at least 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of fields and many buildings, including homes for more than 1,000 families.
"It is hard to expect any harvest from the fields washed away or silted," the agency said. "Harvest in many fields is expected to drop 30 percent."
Rains since early July have caused widespread damage, cutting off rail services in many areas of the center and south and washing away roads, KCNA said in its rare report on a natural disaster. It did not mention casualties or deaths.
Officials at South Korea's Red Cross and the Unification Ministry said by telephone they were seeking further information and the North had not yet asked for help.
LITTLE AID IN PIPELINE
Planned North-South ministerial talks this week look likely to be postponed because of the North's anger over a South Korean operation last week to bring some 460 North Korean refugees to the South.
North Korea depends on foreign aid to feed about a quarter of its 22.5 million people. Food shortages have prompted hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to seek refuge in neighboring China.
Recent South Korean research shows North Korea is expected to suffer food shortages of around one million tons in 2004 due in part to less fertilizer support from other countries, the South's Yonhap news agency has said.
Russia has sent 35,000 tons of food to North Korea as part of the World Food Program's aid plans, the United Nations agency said in a statement which noted the shipment was Moscow's first donation to North Korea through the WFP.
The statement quoted Richard Ragan, WFP country director for North Korea, as saying Russian wheat would end a two-month interruption in rations to to pregnant and nursing women and to children in schools, orphanages, hospitals and nurseries.
"But as things stand, there is little aid in the pipeline for the latter months of the year," Ragan said.
The WFP has received confirmed pledges of just 125,000 tonnes of the target of 484,000 tonnes of food it appealed for this year to feed 6.5 million North Koreans, he said.
"We urgently need firm commitments to plug that gap."
Most of the deaths in Bangladesh, and across the border in the Indian states of Assam and Bihar, have been caused by snakebites, disease, house collapses and drowning.
Sixteen new deaths were reported from across Bangladesh in the last 24 hours, raising the toll in the country to 560, authorities said.
Authorities in Assam said they had put the healthcare system on alert and were stocking up medicines to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic in the state.
They said flood waters in most rivers across the state were receding after the worst flooding in 15 years killed about 222 people and left 12 million homeless.
The disaster has also caused billions of dollars of damage as it destroyed bridges, homes, roads, rail lines, communication links and businesses.
In Dhaka, where an estimated 2.5 million people have been stranded by the flooding, temporary shelters are overflowing with people, rife with hunger and disease.
Some victims said they wait almost an entire day, often standing in filthy flood waters, hoping to grab their share of meager foodgrains and money offered by government officials and private agencies.
Many go back disappointed as supplies run out quickly.
"I am in the shelter for a week now but have received nothing," said 60-year-old Amiran Bibi. "I don't need rice or money. Please give me some dry or cooked food and some water for survival. Never in my life had I suffered so much." (Additional reporting by Nizam Ahmed in DHAKA and Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI)
