The World Food Programme (WFP) this week is preparing to undertake a nationwide malnutrition survey of up to 4,000 children affected by famine in North Korea, a spokeswoman announced yesterday.
Four teams of four people each will weigh and measure between 3,500 and 4,000 children in 18 localities.
"It's an important sample. It's rare that we are able to do it with so many people," Ms Christiane Berthiaume said. "That will allow us to measure the scope of malnutrition throughout the country."
North Korean authorities have admitted to only around 130 deaths of children from malnutrition. Aid agencies believe the number is far higher.
Each team will consist of one international nutrition expert, a translator and two employees of the country's Institute of Child Nutrition, which is the WFP's local partner in the exercise.
"We are targeting children because they are the most vulnerable group," Ms Berthiaume said. Preparations for the survey were completed last week and a final report is due out in late September, she said.
North Korea, entirely dependent on outside food handouts after two successive years of devastating floods, has been hit with a drought this summer.
Sixty days without rain have wiped out almost 70 per cent of 1.5 million tonnes of North Korea's maize crop this summer, according to WFP surveys and the North Korean government.
In Kumho, an unprecedented international project to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea was initiated with a symbolic blast at a ground-breaking ceremony yesterday.
A multinational consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), is to build two 1,000-megawatt light water reactors on the barren site in return for the isolated communist North freezing its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
President Clinton said the project had now "reached a major new milestone" and would contribute greatly to promoting peace on the divided Korean peninsula.