The European Union is among those to resume direct food aid, partially through the United Nations World Food Program. WFP regional director for Asia Kenro Oshidari says North Korea faces two major problems - its annual food deficit and damage to crop harvests this year.
“North Korea has had yearly an annual sort of food deficit. They just simply don‘t produce enough cereals inside the country, and in the past depended much on food aid as well as commercial imports,” he said.
“This number of both food aid and the commercial imports has decreased dramatically.
”Secondly they have two harvests; the winter harvest, which is a smaller one but nevertheless important, was damaged by climatic factors.“
Even the 300,000 tons of food aid the WFP will provide is far from covering the national food deficit. The WFP has been seeking about $200 million from donors to help provide food aid to the country, but has only received a quarter of that.
Oshidari says despite the recent assistance from the EU, the lack of funding means, it will not be able to provide aid to all 3.5 million people in North Korea. ”At the same time there are implications on our number of staff we can have in that country, the number of offices we can open in that country,“ he said.
However, despite protests, the Obama administration has made no moves this week to lift the ban on providing food aid to North Korea.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com