The UN World Food Programme is to open an appeal for $280 million worth of food aid for North Korea as the hungry communist state faces its annual lean period, a UN official said yesterday.
"We are now entering the most difficult months of the year for people in North Korea," said Mr David Morton, the UN co-ordinator and WFP representative in North Korea.
May and June would put "stress" on the population because food from last year's harvest would dry up in the government distribution system by early April and new planting would only just be under way, he told a news conference in Beijing.
Millions of hungry North Koreans entering the fifth year of food shortages in the impoverished Stalinist state would turn to wild plants and manufactured "alternative foods" - noodles and cakes made of indigestible grasses and cornstalks, he said.
For its aid programme in North Korea, which focuses exclusively on children, the WFP is seeking 584,000 tonnes of food aid worth $280 million for a one-year period from July, he said. It would be the fifth such WFP appeal since 1995.