PYONGYANG, North Korea – Millions of
North Korean children are not getting the food, medicine or health care
they need to develop physically or mentally, leaving many stunted and
malnourished, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Nearly
a third of children under age 5 show signs of stunting, particularly in
rural areas where food is scarce, and chronic diarrhea due to a lack of
clean water, sanitation and electricity has become the leading cause of
death among children, the agency said. Hospitals are spotless but bare;
few have running water or power, and drugs and medicine are in short
supply, the agency said in a detailed update on the humanitarian
situation in North Korea.
"I've seen babies ... who
should have been sitting up who were not sitting up, and can hardly hold
a baby bottle," Jerome Sauvage, the U.N.'s Pyongyang-based resident
coordinator for North Korea, said in Beijing before presenting the
report to donors.
The report paints a horrific
picture of deprivation in the countryside, not often seen by outsiders,
who are usually not allowed to travel beyond the relatively prosperous
Pyongyang, where cherubic children are hand-picked to attend government
celebrations and a middle-class with a taste for good food have the
means to eat out.
Sauvage's report provides not only
further evidence of North Korea's inability to feed its people, but
also bolsters critics who say the government should be spending on food
security instead of building up its military, testing rockets and
pursuing a nuclear program denounced by the U.N., the United States and
South Korea.
The United Nations called for $198 million in donations for 2012 — mostly to help feed the hungry.
The
appeal comes at a delicate time for North Korea, which has sought to
project an image of stability and unity during the transition to power
of the new, young leader, Kim Jong Un.
Yet the government has begun to publicly acknowledge a severe shortage of food for the first time in years.
In
late May, in an unusual admission of a food problem by a high-ranking
official, North Korea's premier, Choe Yong Rim, urged farmers to do
their part in alleviating the food shortage, according to the state-run
Korean Central News Agency.
Worries of another
drought have also been raised by a reported shortfall of rain this
spring in some areas, which will likely lead to reduced harvest in the
fall. The apparent effects of the drought were witnessed by The
Associated Press in May in South Phyongan province.
"I
have been working at the farm for more than 30 years, but I have never
experienced this kind of severe drought," An Song Min, a farmer at the
Tokhae Cooperative Farm in the Nampho area, told the AP as he stood in
parched fields where the dirt crumbled through his fingers.
North
Korea does not produce enough food to feed its 24 million people, and
relies on limited purchases of food as well as outside donations to make
up the shortfall. North Korea also suffered a famine in the mid- and
late-1990s, the FAO and World Food Program said in a special report late
last year.
About 16 million North Koreans —
two-thirds of the country — depend on twice-a-month government
rations, the U.N. report said. And there are no signs the government
will undertake the long-term structural reforms needed to spur economic
growth, it said.
Rations usually consist of barley,
maize or rice, if they're lucky, while many children are growing up
without eating any protein, Sauvage said. He said malnutrition over a
generation can have a severe affect on physical growth, cognitive
capacity and the ability to learn.
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