UN WFP says drought-hit North Korea faces water shortage

Voice of America (VOA) reported on Saturday that North Korea, which is claiming that it has been hit by the worst drought in 100 years, recently asked the United Nations for humanitarian aid of medicine to treat water-borne diseases. While the drought-hit communist regime is asking for humanitarian aid from the international community, it does not make any request to South Korea, which announced willingness to help Pyongyang to survive from the severe dry spell.

According to VOA, the United Nations investigators will visit North Hamkyong Province in North Korea on Friday to investigate the drought impact jointly with investigators from international organizations and civic groups. In a draft of the joint investigation report, the United Nation said a North Korean official asked the joint investigation team for humanitarian aid of medicine to prevent water-borne diseases and water purification tablets. The joint investigation team consists of officials from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization.

“North Korea faces water shortage due to the drought. As water quality has gone down, water-borne diseases are great concerns. The North Korean government admitted that it lacks capability to effectively address dry spells,” said the joint investigators in the report. “The crop yields such as barley are likely to decline by 40 percent up to 50 percent compared to the previous year. If the drought persists, yields of rice and corn, which are harvested in the autumn, are expected to go down by 30 to 40 percent,” said the report.

However, some raised skepticism over a possibility of food shortage resulted from the drought.“Double crop harvest, which will be harvested at the end of June, inevitably declines by 20 percent due to the drought (compared to the previous year). But the double crop accounts for only 8 percent of the total grain production. It is not likely that Pyongyang faces a severe food shortage immediately,” said Kwon Tae-jin, a North Korean agriculture expert and the president of GS&J Institute for North Korea & North East Asia Research. A South Korean official said that the government would not provide a large scale food aid to North Korea.