North Korean authorities have indicated flooding may have left up to 300 000 people homeless, a United Nations aid-agency spokesperson said on Wednesday, while the communist state warned of a poor harvest this year due to the heavy rain.
North Korea, which has suffered chronic food shortages for years, said hundreds were dead or missing after flooding over the past several days that washed away thousands of structures and ruined cropland in the country’s agricultural bread basket.
The North’s official KCNA news agency quoted an Agricultural Ministry official as saying on Wednesday the damage to farm crops was heavier than in previous floods, with more than 11% of paddy and maize fields submerged, buried or swept away.
”Unprecedented torrential rains have poured down in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] for days in succession from August 7, throwing a shadow over [the] prospect of the agricultural production,” the agency said. ”It is hard to expect a high grain output owing to the uninterrupted rainstorms at the most important time for the growth of crops in the country.”
Paul Risley, Asia spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme, said a UN assessment team had visited one flood-hit area near Pyongyang, and added that North Korea was seeking international help.
”There was great concern that because these floods occurred during the period of pollination, that it is likely that these floods will have a very significant impact on the quantity of harvest,” Risley said by telephone from Bangkok.
North Korean officials who met the assessment team said they believed that 200 000 to 300 000 people had been dislocated by the floods and were in dire need of shelter and food, Risley said.
More UN assessment teams will visit other flood-ravaged areas in the coming days, he said. ”The primary need will be for emergency food rations, shelter material and medicine.”
Promises of aid
In New York on Tuesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, promised at a meeting with North Korean ambassador Pak Gil Yon that the world body would do all it could to help. The South Korean government has said it is ready to aid its neighbour, but has yet to receive a request. The United States is also considering aid.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it expected damage to be worse than last year, when three big storms hit North Korea. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported that more than 800 people were killed or went missing in the resulting floods.
The ministry said it does not believe the flooding will delay a planned summit of the leaders of the two Koreas set for August 28 to 30 in Pyongyang.
In a late Tuesday dispatch, the North’s official KCNA news agency said the floods ”are causing an enormous damage to the various sectors of the national economy”. It said landslides have wrecked railway lines and roads, while electric lines have snapped in a country that does not generate enough power to keep street lights on at night in most places.
Official news broadcasts in the secretive state showed images of collapsed bridges and civilians digging with shovels and their hands for material to build embankments. The broadcasts were monitored in Seoul.
Bangladesh battles disease
Meanwhile, at least 38 more people died overnight in Bangladesh, including two from water-borne diseases, raising the death toll in the low-lying country’s worst floods in recent years to nearly 500, officials said on Wednesday.
The flood waters that have also inundated large parts of eastern India have since receded, but millions remain homeless and vulnerable to disease, aid officials said.
More than 53 000 people have contracted diarrhoea in Bangladesh, mostly caused by eating stale food and drinking impure water. A field hospital has been opened in the capital, Dhaka, to treat diarrhoea patients.
”The overall diarrhoea situation is grim. Every day there is a rush of patients,” said Ayesha Khatoon, a senior official at the government’s health directorate. ”We are trying to cope with it.”
One doctor at the Dhaka-based International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research said the facility had received 1 100 patients on Tuesday, the highest single-day admissions in its history. ”We suspect the flow will increase further,” said Dr Azharul Islam Khan.
The country’s interim government said it was doing everything possible to ensure that flood victims get food, clean water and access to health care.
With floods easing, many people in relief camps are heading back to their homes. ”They hardly have a roof on their heads or anything to eat,” said an official in northern Kurigram district, one of the areas worst hit by the floods. — Reuters