TROCAIRE has launched an appeal for £500,000 to provide emergency food aid for more than 5 million North Koreans who are facing starvation in the coming months.
"A famine in slow motion" was how Ms Kathi Zellweger of Caritas International described the catastrophe unfolding there. Ms Zellweger is one of the few westerners allowed into North Korea.
Speaking at the launch of the appeal in Dublin yesterday, Ms Zellweger poured a handful of rice into a glass, saying this was all the average North Korean had to eat each day. "You can't survive very long on that - 350 calories a day." To supplement their meagre diet, people were mixing their rice into a soup containing any other ingredients they could find - roots, herbs, tree bark, even sawdust.
Trocaire's director, Mr Justin Kilcullen, compared the situation to the Great Famine. "When the potato failed in Ireland for the third time in 1847, there was nothing left to eat. With the failure of the rice crop for the third time in North Korea, people are on the brink of starvation.
"To turn our back on North Korea would have disastrous effects not only on the North Koreans but on the whole region," he suggested. Humanitarian organisations fear a sudden collapse of the regime could trigger massive outflows of refugees to South Korea and China.
On her most recent visit last month, Ms Zellweger found schools and nurseries abandoned. "I asked where the children were. They told me they were too weak to come to school any more. One teacher told me five of her children had died."
Meanwhile, the economy is in a "downward spiral". The roads are empty because there is no petrol to run cars. Most trains have stopped running.
Unlike many African countries which have also experienced famine, North Korea has a harsh climate - winter temperatures of minus 15 Celsius are common. "For this reason, people need to take in more calories, but they are also getting sick more easily."
However, because the communist regime in North Korea has sealed the country off, the famine has attracted little notice. The media have been denied access and only a few observers and relief workers such as Ms Zellweger have witnessed the disaster.
Asked if the aid would reach the people for whom it was intended, she said a monitoring system had been put in place to ensure the food provided did not fall into the hands of the army. It was better to help the country through this critical period while pressing for greater liberalisation rather than risk an outbreak of famine, she believed. This could cause great suffering as well as destabilising the entire region.
While other Western governments have generally treated North Korea as a pariah, the Government put up £100,000 for relief aid earlier this year. Germany and Canada have also changed their minds and donated aid.
Trocaire has so far donated £150,000, channelled through its sister agency, Caritas, in Hong Kong.
