By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
The food situation in North Korea appears to be worsening this year.
According to Good Friends, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to helping North Koreans, Tuesday, the area of Sinuiju, a special region in the west bordering with China, has had more than 300 deaths during the first two months of 2010, and another 1,000 are on the verge of starving to death.
This came only a few days after a Yonhap report that a homeless girl was spotted in Pyongyang, the capital, which is believed to be the most affluent area in the country.
The Good Friends' news letter quoted an anonymous official of the North Korean city saying, "Nothing like this has happened before ― not even during the hardest starvation period in the middle of the 1990s. The situation in my city indicates that it's even worse in other provinces."
The cause for the dire food-shortage is multifold.
Recent currency reform is believed to have aggravated the food supply situation. Because of the inflation, people were robbed of what food they had. Many shops and restaurants in the capital had to shut down, or ran out of commodities following the currency reform.
One diplomat in Seoul, who returned from Pyongyang recently, said a restaurant owned by a Japanese-Korean couple that he used to go had closed.
At first he didn't know why, yet was later told that the restaurant went out of business after the reform.
The famine worsened due to a fall in foreign aid.
South Korea stopped its food assistance after conservative Lee Myung-bak arrived at Cheong Wa Dae. The number of vessels with U.S. flags have also dropped after its leader Kim Jong-il's nuclear stunt. Ambassador Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, did not mention anything on Washington's food assistance during his recent trip to Pyongyang.
International organizations also have a shortage of food to give to the North. The World Food Program's officer in Pyongyang recently told the Financial Times that without new emerging donors, it will have to stop its food distribution after June.
Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have played a negative role in securing North Korea's food supply, as North Korea now takes a back seat in priority.
According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute, without assistance from the international community, North Korea will fall short on food demand worth $1 million to $2 million.
Observers also say that it isn't just ordinary people who are becoming poor and struggling to feed themselves.
The regime living on the edge of bankruptcy has come up with schemes to rake in foreign cash.
Tourism promotion is one of the pronounced efforts. Not only has the regime lifted restrictions on Chinese tourists, it also lifted a ban on U.S. tourists' entry for the first time.
It allowed Chinese investment last month, and earlier this week, an announcement came that the North would open Rajin Port to China. skim@koreatimes.co.kr
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