NEWS STORY: Relief group: Korean famine total may be 1 million

c. 1997 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ World Vision, the evangelical international relief agency, says a survey it has taken along the North Korea-China border suggests somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Koreans have died as a result of the devastating combined impact of floods and famine in the country.”The tragedy is that there have […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ World Vision, the evangelical international relief agency, says a survey it has taken along the North Korea-China border suggests somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Koreans have died as a result of the devastating combined impact of floods and famine in the country.”The tragedy is that there have been widespread deaths this year alone and that many more people may meet the same fate over the next several months,”said Andrew Natsios, World Vision vice president.

The group’s estimate of the number of famine-related deaths comes from an admittedly informal survey of 400 North Koreans, as well as interviews with Chinese and Russians who have visited North Korea.


The survey, taken in the northern region of the country, indicated an average of 15 percent of the people have died in villages reported on.

International aid groups, including a score of religious and secular non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies have long said the food situation in North Korea is deteriorating and that children, especially, are vulnerable to starvation.

But the estimate by World Vision is one of the first to use an actual figure.”A very, very conservative estimate of the mortality rates this year have indicated at least a half-million people have died this year,”Natsios told a news conference in New York Tuesday (Sept. 16).”I think its probably closer to 1 to 2 million.” The World Vision survey comes as officials from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization are meeting with North Korean officials to assess what appear to be gloomy prospects for any improvement in North Korea’s food situation this year.”Guarded optimism expressed earlier for some recovery in food production this year is now replaced by very serious alarm at food insecurity problems for the coming months and year ahead,”the U.N.’s FAO and World Food Program said in a joint statement Monday.

Church relief groups have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into famine relief efforts in Korea, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the need.”It is imperative that our government, as well as nations throughout the world, stop pretending this so-called `food shortage’ is anything but a full-scale famine of significant proportions,”Natsios said.

World Vision said that anecdotal information from North Koreans in China include stories of corpses”everywhere on the streets”of some villages and of people reusing coffins to save wood.

While calling on the United States and other Western governments to step up aid to North Korea, Natsios was also critical of the country’s secrecy and tight security, and its refusal to allow the media to cover the famine without”government minders.” He said the North Korean government needed to be pressured to open up access for food aid and recommended no more aid flow through Pyongyang, the Korean capital, but be delivered through eastern ports and across the Chinese border.

Meanwhile, experts on North Korea in South Korea said they believe World Vision’s death estimates are”exaggerated.””We can only guess at how many North Koreans have died of starvation,”an official of South Korea’s Unification Ministry told Reuters Tuesday.”But a figure of 500,000 to 2 million deaths seems to be an exaggeration,”the official said.


United Nations officials in North Korea also expressed doubt about the figures, but said it is nearly impossible to gather good information on the numbers.”I have my doubts about the survey,”said Brigitta Karlgren, the World Food Program’s director in North Korea. She told Reuters her office had no statistics on the number of deaths by starvation.

MJP END ANDERSON

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