Aid agency warns on N Korea

Caritas wants to help North Korea become more self-reliant

Local food production in impoverished North Korea is increasing, but the state is still desperately short of humanitarian support, according to aid agency Caritas.

Kathi Zellweger, manager of Caritas' North Korea programme, has visited the country more than 80 times.

"It is sometimes really shocking what you see," she told BBC News Online.

While harvests have improved in the North in the last two years, aid agencies still estimate that the country is suffering a cereal deficit of 1m tonnes for 2002/3.

Ms Zellweger said that the most marked indicator of North Korean deprivation was the difference in size between children in the North and South.

A seven-year-old boy in the North is 20cm shorter and 10 kilos lighter than a boy of the same age in the South, according to Ms Zellweger.

Pyongyang, in an effort to ameliorate the situation, last year introduced limited economic reforms, in the form of adjusted wages and prices.

North Koreans now have to pay for rent, electricity and other services.

"It is still very early to assess the impact (of the reforms), but generally I think it was a bold step forward in the right direction," Ms Zellweger said.

"It is the first time people have choices.... so a new thinking has entered," she said.

However she stressed that "more people will fall through an already very weak social security net", compounding existing disparities between different sections of society.

"The most problematic situation is for industrial workers," who live in apartment blocks with no garden, and therefore cannot grow their own food.

Those in children's homes are still some of the most vulnerable

She said that when people get too hungry, they go foraging for mushrooms, herbs and roots.

"People still know what is edible," she said.

Although food provision has improved since the famine crisis of 1995-7, Ms Zellweger said that North Korea's infrastructure has gradually disintegrated since the mid-1990s.

For example, more bicycles are used, as public transport deteriorates, and Caritas now include a bike in their aid packages for rural villages.

The staple foodstuffs in North Korea are maize and rice. Caritas has recently introduced sweet potatoes which can be processed into starch and then into noodles.

But Ms Zellweger noted that mountainous North Korea is not an agrarian country - only 18-20% of land is arable.

"In the long term we believe the industries need to be revitalised" so the North can earn money in order to import food.

The agency has, for example, begun investing in local factories to produce clothes, rather than importing them from Hong Kong.

North Koreans are "very proud people, and they do not like to be aid recipients", she said.