Access for aid, North Korea told

UN food chief believes winds of change will open donor taps

NORTH Korea needs to allow more access and monitoring for international aid, the head of the UN’s World Food Programme said yesterday following a four-day visit to the country.

The food body is one of the few aid agencies operating in the isolated country, which suffered a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people – estimates range into the millions – in the mid-1990s.

But raising money for humanitarian aid in North Korea has become more challenging as Pyongyang has poured resources into its nuclear and missile programmes rather than feeding its people, and been hit with multiple rounds of UN sanctions as a result.

The UN body’s chief, David Beasley, said Pyongyang was granting wider access than ever before, with his organisation able to carry out 1 800 site visits last year, but it needed to allow more.

“We still need greater access, more information, more data,” he told a media conference in Seoul.

“I said very clearly you have people around the world who are concerned that the food and the money won’t go to its intended consequences.”

Around the world, the number of severely hungry people had spiked from 80 million to 124 million in the last three years, he said, while the UN body was $2-billion to $3-billion (R25.2-billion to R37.7-billion) short of its funding goals.

Without access, he said, “the chances of receiving funds necessary, or food necessary, to move the ball forward in food security is going to be a difficult game”.

The UN sought $114-million (R1.4-billion) in aid from donors last year for North Korea but received only $31-million (R390-million), and so was able to help only 15% of those it targeted for food assistance. But Beasley said he felt a tremendous sense of optimism in his meetings with North Korean officials in the hopes of turning a new chapter in history.

Dialogue brokered by Seoul has seen US-North Korea relations go from trading personal insults and threats of war last year to a summit between leader Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump due in Singapore on June 12.

Experts say North Korea needs to produce about 6.5 to 6.7 million metric tons of food to feed its population, but usually grows about one million tons less than that, leading to chronic shortfalls.