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North Korea 'building up to new hunger crisis'

North Korea has drastically cut public food handouts as it heads towards a new hunger crisis with people again eating grass to survive, one of the most experienced aid workers in the isolated nation said.

Katharina Zellweger, who heads a Swiss government aid office in Pyongyang, says food rations have been cut to as low as 150 grams a day per person in some parts of the country as foreign donations collapse and higher international prices make imports more expensive.

But at the same time, Ms Zellweger, who has been active in North Korea for 15 years, says there are definite signs of change.

She says a new moneyed middle class is emerging while the strictly regimented state has lauded a new "mini-MBA" run by her agency using Hong Kong teachers.

Food supplies to the estimated population of 23 million people have been controlled through a public distribution system for decades.

"It works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't work," Ms Zellweger said.

"The lowest I heard was 150 grams per person per day, and I even heard that in Pyongyang the rations are cut to 200 grams per person per day."

Diplomats say the rations have been halved over the past 18 months. One hundred grams of rice produces about 250-350 calories a day.

Ms Zellweger says she has seen "a lot more malnourished children" on recent travels around the country.

"You see more people out in the fields and on the hillsides digging roots, cutting grass or herbs. So there are signs that there is going to be a crisis," she said.

'New crisis'

North Korea went through a famine in the late 1990s in which hundreds of thousands died of hunger.

"What we had this year is many small shocks which is building up to new crisis," Ms Zellweger said.

"What I think is the question we are all grappling with, is when is the tipping point? When does the situation shift from chronic malnutrition to acute malnutrition?"

Ms Zellweger says "a long, miserable cold winter" has badly hit spring crops and potato seedlings.

This has compounded reduced foreign aid as North Korea faces a hardline attitude from the rival South Korea and the United States over its nuclear weapons program.

The US has demanded proof that food aid will not be misused before it resumes shipments. South Korea used to provide up to 350,000 tonnes a year of fertiliser. This stopped in 2007.

Ms Zellweger says the World Food Program sent 136,000 tonnes of food to North Korea in 2008 but donations have dried up and this fell to 55,000 tonnes last year and by this month only 11,000 tonnes had been sent this year.

"Hunger is not necessarily visible in the streets," said the aid worker, who worked for a Swiss charity in the North before taking over the Swiss government program five years ago.

"If you don't have a trained eye it is a lot of hidden misery and that was also the case in 1995.

"It was not hunger in the streets, it was very much behind closed doors."


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