THE fate of millions of starving people in North Korea may rest on talks due to take place in Beijing today between the Red Cross organisations of North and South Korea, the first such conference of the two bodies in almost five years.
An initial meeting on Saturday was adjourned with no agreement on shipping food aid to the North, but Lee Byungwoong, secretary general of South Korea's Red Cross, said he expected good results when the talks resume today.
The communist regime in North Korea has refused to grant western correspondents visas to report firsthand on a disaster which seems to be inexorably unfolding across North Korea, but most world agencies now say that food supplies there have been exhausted.
"During the last two months, the situation has gone from bad to worse, said Ole Gronning, the representative in North Korea of the International Federation of Red Cross. "The stocks are now completely empty. So if we don't get considerable support from outside here and now, we are facing a large scale humanitarian disaster in North Korea with massive starvation."
The UN World Food Programme has estimated there is only enough food to provide North Korea's 24 million people with near starvation supplies until June, following two years of disastrous floods.
The next harvests are not due until October. The WFP plans to carry out a nutritional assessment of children in the coming weeks to see how far their weight and height have shrunk, but reports from Chinese traders who frequently cross the border speak of a countryside where livestock has almost disappeared, roads are deserted and people eat bark and powdered wood.
Red Cross officials said the talks in Beijing would decide procedures for transporting and distributing food to the North, but not the size or timing of aid. South Korea wants to deliver food quickly and efficiently to the North through the Korean border village of Panmunjom, instead of by ship or train through China, and to bypass the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The World Food Programme has appealed for $95.5 million to provide 203,000 tonnes of food to North Korea. The United States has promised $25 million and South Korea $6 million, plus 50,000 tonnes of corn.
On Wednesday South Korea the US and Japan will hold talks in Tokyo to discuss food shortages in the North, amid fears that North Korea might invade the South in a reckless attempt to survive as one of the world's last communist powers.
North Korea agreed last month to join peace talks with South Korea, China and the United States on condition that it was guaranteed large scale food aid, US diplomatic recognition and an easing of trade sanctions.
. South Korean prosecutors have evidence of corruption by President Kim Young Sam's second son, who is suspected of hiding slush funds, it was reported yesterday.
Their investigators traced money allegedly collected by him.