"When things get better here, we will return your generosity 10 times." So said Mrs Jong Jon Kum, a North Korean mother of four children, aged 15, 10, seven and five, after she received a consignment of rice last week sent by the Irish aid agency, Trocaire.
The woman expressed her gratitude to monitors from Trocaire, Ms Naimh O'Carroll and Ms Mary Healy, who have just returned from a week in the reclusive communist state.
"Another woman, Li Son Ae, aged 69, said that the rice was very welcome as there was nothing else," Ms O'Carroll said in Beijing yesterday, en route to Ireland.
"She was a tiny, fragile woman who was taking the rice home balanced in a bundle on her head. She said she would mix it with some grass to make a meal for herself, her husband and her daughter."
The first major consignment of food aid from Trocaire arrived last week in North Korea, where famine has developed after floods and drought were followed last week by a massive tidal wave.
Trocaire estimates that its consignment of 3,750 tons of rice, which arrived at the port of Nambo on Wednesday from Vietnam after delays at sea, could feed 100,000 children under seven for three months. It is working together with the Catholic relief agency, Caritas. Distribution is being co-ordinated by World Food Programme officials.
When the ship docked the rice, packed in bags, was transferred immediately to trucks sent from designated districts. The Trocaire monitors were able to follow some of the food to the families receiving it.
Ms Healy said there was a need for much more aid. "As winter approaches with temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees people are facing real hardship. With the flooding of many coalmines last week following the tidal waves there is a serious shortage of fuel and many hospitals, nurseries, and houses have broken windows.
"We still urgently need more money to buy more rice but we also have to look at measures to ensure people's survival during the winter."