Twin typhoons raise fears of humanitarian crisis in North Korea

Typhoons Bolaven and Tembin cause floods and landslides in country still struggling to recover from earlier floods and drought
Displaced family in North Korea August 2012
Floods have left many North Korean families displaced as fears of a humanitarian crisis grow. Photograph: David Guttenfelder/AP


Typhoon Bolaven struck North Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday, submerging houses and roads, ruining thousands of acres of crops and triggering landslides that buried train tracks. A second major storm, Typhoon Tembin, hit the Korean peninsula with more rains on Thursday.

The storms come as North Korea is still recovering from earlier floods that killed more than 170 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That in turn followed a springtime drought that was the worst in a century in some areas.

Foreign aid groups contacted on Thursday said they were standing by in Pyongyang, but had not received new requests for help from the North Korean government. They had little information on the extent of damage and were relying on reports from state media. The country's wariness of the outside world, and its primitive rural road system means aid may be slow arriving, if it is allowed to come at all.

"These fresh storms, coming just a few weeks after the serious flooding – they do raise concerns because we see parts of the countryside battered again that have already been left in a vulnerable state," said Francis Markus, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in east Asia.

Tembin's strong winds and heavy rain hit South Korea on Thursday, as residents of some cities waded through streets flooded knee-deep. The national weather agency in Seoul said the storm would move off the peninsula's east coast and that some cities in North Korea would see severe weather conditions.

There were no deaths reported from Tembin, but Bolaven left 20 people dead or missing in South Korea.

North Korea has yet to release casualty details, though heavy rains that might be little more than an inconvenience elsewhere can be calamitous there.

Downpours trigger landslides on the country's deforested mountainsides. For years, rural people have felled trees to grow crops and for fuel, leaving the landscape barren and heavily eroded. Rivers overflow, submerging crops, inundating roads and engulfing hamlets.

Since June, thousands have been left without clean water, electricity and access to food and other supplies. That leads to a risk of waterborne and respiratory diseases and malnutrition, aid workers say.

Because North Korea struggles to produce enough food each year to feed its 24 million people, a natural disaster can easily tip the country into crisis, as was the case in the 1990s when famine followed a similar succession of devastating storms.

A North Korean land management official acknowledged that widespread deforestation and a lack of basic infrastructure had made the country vulnerable to the typhoons and storms that batter the peninsula each year.

"It's important for the future of our children to make our country rich and beautiful," Ri Song Il, director of external affairs for the ministry of land and environmental protection, said in June.

He said a campaign was under way to replenish forests, build highways and construct proper irrigation at the order of North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un. He held up a green pamphlet on land management that was the first official document Kim published after taking power from his father.

But it may be too little, too late, for this year's summer rains.

In Pyongyang, the rains have been little more than a nuisance for residents, but outside the capital it's a different story. In villages without the luxury of paved roads, summer downpours have submerged tracks and washed away bridges, all but cutting off already isolated communities from supplies, food and help.

Two weeks ago, AP journalists visited a mining hamlet in South Phyongan province where torrents of water from an earlier storm overwhelmed a whole block of homes. The trip, a mere 40-mile drive northeast of Pyongyang, required a four-hour ride along rutted, muddy roads.

Along the way, workers piled stones along the roadside as a bulwark against landslides, but they were no match for the water rushing down the mountainsides.

Villagers crouched in makeshift lean-tos and camped on the rubble where their houses once stood. They vowed to rebuild once the roads are restored and lorries can bring in cement. But there are concerns about how vulnerable their new homes would be if they rebuild at the foot of a mountain in the county of Songchon, which means "place where many waters come together".

North Korea has no clear long-term strategy to deal with disasters or climate change, the UN said in a report issued in June.

This year, North Korea is at a particularly dangerous juncture, according to the Red Cross. Over the last two years "we've been seeing a gradual deterioration in the humanitarian situation," Markus said.

The Red Cross works with villagers to prepare evacuation plans and other ways to protect themselves, their homes and their farmland in the event of a disaster, he said.

But severe weather remains an omnipresent threat, and poor infrastructure and deforestation are "a major factor in exacerbating these weather events," he said. "There's no doubt that the vulnerabilities in the countryside are considerable."