The first major consignment of food aid from Trocaire for hungry children in North Korea has arrived, in the form of 3,750 tonnes of rice which will be distributed in the coming days to kindergartens and hospitals. Trocaire estimates that this will feed up to 100,000 children under seven for three months. United Nations agencies estimate that North Korea, which is suffering drought after two years of devastating floods, needs 725,000 tonnes of food aid before October.
Two monitors from Trocaire, Ms Niamh O'Carroll and Ms Mary Healy, are due to arrive in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, today to oversee the operation. "We will monitor the distribution of the food and work out what further assistance is needed," Ms O'Carroll said in Beijing yesterday. "We also want to know how to target further assistance and what groups are considered most vulnerable."
The rice, in 50kg bags, arrived in the North Korean port of Nampo from Vietnam on Thursday. It is the first of three batches of food aid being supplied by Trocaire after an appeal in recent weeks raised more than £1 million.
Tomorrow £350,000 worth of high-energy biscuits will be flown in to Pyongyang from Berlin, and in two weeks 150 tonnes of palm oil will be shipped in from Malaysia. More aid will be sent to North Korea in the coming months.
Trocaire and another Catholic relief agency, Caritas, are working together to alleviate some of the immediate food shortages. Last year they provided 12,503 tonnes of rice, 883.5 metric tonnes of soya blend (for under-fives and pregnant women) and 380 tonnes of materials to manufacture plastic sheeting for seed propagation.
A major Trocaire appeal for aid was launched after a visit to North Korea by Mr Justin Kilcullen, director of Trocaire, and a colleague, Ms Mary Sweeney, three months ago. It received a biggerthan-expected response, with many donors recalling the Famine in Ireland.
Mr Kilcullen said when he returned to Dublin: "The situation is very bad and it may be only a few weeks before there are massive numbers of deaths. People are struggling to eke out an existence and some people are just not going to make it."
In its official appeal for aid, Trocaire said that if help was not forthcoming, "millions could die. It is as stark as that."
Almost all of Korea's population of 24 million are suffering severe food shortages which began after the break-up of North Korea's patron, the Soviet Union, in 1991.
In September 1994 hailstorms destroyed 170,000 hectares of arable lands and resulted in the loss of more than one million tonnes of grain. In 1995 the worst flooding in 100 years destroyed two million tonnes of maize and one million tonnes of rice. The catastrophic floods recurred last year.
This year there has been a drought which has all but ruined the grain crop. UN monitors say people in North Korea are starving to death in slow motion. Severely malnourished children with arms like sticks and folds of skin hanging from their limbs sit or lie listlessly in nurseries and kindergartens. Many in hospitals are beyond help.
Aid workers are satisfied that food now being supplied by aid agencies is being distributed efficiently to schools, nurseries and hospitals and is not being siphoned off by the 1.1 million strong North Korean army.
Monitoring offices have been set up in North Korea by the United Nations World Food Programme as the long-closed Stalinist country shows hesitant signs of opening up to the outside world.
Last week a US congressional delegation visited the country, although they were not allowed to see food-distribution centres as they requested, and CNN was also given limited access, although the country is otherwise closed to foreign journalists. The US has pledged to give $52 million (£39 million) in aid to North Korea, although it has not lifted trade sanctions.
Earlier this week North Korea's relations with its ideological enemies thawed slightly when South Korean, Japanese and American officials attended a ground-breaking ceremony in North Korea for the first of two light water reactors being built by the Korean Peninsula Development Energy Organisation.
They result from a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear research programme. which the US feared could have resulted in the making of nuclear weapons.
See also page 10