All 2.6 million children in North Korea suffer from food deficiency and this combined with the harshness of winter could lead to "disastrous consequences" in the coming months, a senior official of the UN World Food Programme warned in Beijing yesterday.
Based on international weightfor-age standards, all children in the Stalinist state "are below average, below what they should be," Mr Douglas Casson Coutts told a press conference. "Let me repeat that, all of them."
He said that "the high prevalence of stunting" suggests that all children have suffered from food deficits for a considerable length of time. This was based on a non-scientific survey by WFP officials which concluded that malnutrition was afflicting every child under six years old.
North Korea is suffering severe food and fuel shortages because of two floods, a drought and a typhoon in the last three years, and the loss of aid from the former Soviet Union.
Finding coal and wood for heating was now a major concern, and all schools in North Korea will close during February, the coldest winter month because of lack of heat, he said. Winter temperatures can drop below minus 20 Celsius.
Mr Coutts, who is country director for the World Food Programme in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, emphasised, however, that children were held in high esteem and that the men were not taking more than their share. This contrasted with signs of famine in Africa, usually seen in a shifting population, with women selling their clothes and men eating more.
Speaking at a press conference to launch a special report on the two-year-old World Food Programme mission in North Korea, he emphasised that they were seeing the effects of a "very, very severe food shortage," but not a famine.
"This is not a famine in the classic sense of the word, people are not falling over in the streets. It's a very slow, gradual, building situation. It's becoming worse. The combination of food shortages, already existing malnutrition, the lack of pharmaceutical supplies and the harshness of the winters in North Korea could lead to disastrous consequences."
Twice-monthly private markets provided extra food from collective farms and private plots, but no grain could be sold in North Korea except by the government, he said. To sell grain privately was a crime. Food aid monitors had not been allowed to visit these markets and were barred from 150 counties where they could not assess the state of malnutrition.
A typical meal for a North Korean family used to be a bowl of rice with condiments of vegetables, Mr Coutts pointed out. Now meat rarely appeared, rice was scarce and various greens had become the main source of food. They lacked protein and calories to sustain energy. Edible cakes were being made from tree bark but while they filled the stomach they did not provide nutrition.
Because of drought, the autumn maize harvest yielded only 1.14 million tonnes, half of what had been anticipated, he added. The country needed a minimum of 4.6 million tonnes. The rice harvest had been slightly better than hoped for, producing 1.52 million tonnes.
Because of the harvest, the state was now providing everyone with a daily ration of 400g (14 oz) per person per day, up from 100g (3.5 oz), but it was still not sufficient to meet the caloric needs of winter.
The "very beleaguered and overwhelmed" government had simply run out of time, said Mr Coutts, who is based in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. "There is a severe malnutrition problem. We're trying now to help them buy time."
But he admitted that it was a band-aid approach. "This is a long-term problem that the government has to deal with on their own terms. The government is very concerned with spreading out assistance as much as possible. This is the reason you do not see dead people of the streets."
The next will arise when the public distribution system runs out of food in February or March, he said. The report described the outlook for 1988 as grim, and said 1.25 million tonnes of emergency and programme food aid would be needed next year.