While the international community has been quick to help victims of a deadly train explosion, millions of hungry North Koreans remain in desperate need of foreign aid donations, a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Thursday.
Of the $171-million the WFP needs in 2004 to feed 6,5-million of North Korea’s hungriest children, women and elderly people, the agency has managed to collect $21-million since the beginning of the year, said Tony Banbury, a WFP director for Asia.
By comparison, international donations for victims of the train explosion in Ryongchon that killed more than 160 people, injured another 1 300 and destroyed 8 100 homes, surpassed that figure in less than two weeks, he said.
The international community has pledged about $30-million to help the train blast victims, he said.
”The WFP was very effected by Ryongchon and really wanted to help,” Banbury said at a press conference in Seoul. ”But we are equally committed to helping all the other people in North Korea who desperately need international assistance.”
North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its people since the mid-1990s following decades of mismanagement and the loss of Soviet subsidies.
The agency is also trying to help factory workers — a ”new category of vulnerable people” — who are not getting paid thanks to economic reforms introduced two years ago in the communist state, he said.
Many workers, whose salaries used to be guaranteed by the government but must now be paid by the factories themselves, have not been paid because the factories are sitting idle.
Simultaneously, food prices have soared under the new economic system, compounding the difficulties for factory workers trying to feed their families.
Banbury, who visited Ryongchon following the April 22 train blast, said North Korean officials told him that 169 people died in the disaster. Earlier official reports put the death toll at 161.
He said the situation in the Chinese border town was bleak.
”We asked the director of a hospital what he needed, and he basically said everything … From our observations, he was not exaggerating,” Banbury said.
In a rare sign of openness, North Korea has reached out for help from the outside world since the explosion. It has allowed international relief officials to visit the site and has told North Koreans about the international funds donated.
Nevertheless, North Korea has shunned offers from the United States and South Korea to send doctors, saying it has plenty of medical personnel.
Banbury said that although the North Korean doctors seemed dedicated, he didn’t think they had up-to-date training to treat the victims, many of whom were suffering from severe burns.
”I hope they would get the best doctors, wherever they come from,” he said. — Sapa-AP