Food shortages are gripping North Korea amid signs that some of its citizens may already be starving to death, experts and rights activists said Tuesday.
Food rations across much of North Korea have been slashed, and the country’s 1.1 million-strong military reportedly halted major exercises so that soldiers could help raise crops, according to reports out of South Korea.
After a three-year hiatus, the Bush administration is resuming food aid to North Korea, and a U.S. freighter carrying bulk grain is now sailing to make the first delivery from some 500,000 metric tons of food assistance that Washington in May promised the Kim Jong-Il regime over the next year.
But experts said the bulk of U.S. aid would arrive too late to help critical pre-harvest shortages that intensify by the day and are likely to remain bad until August harvests.
About 200,000 to 300,000 people might die of starvation in the next two months if there is no emergency aid from the international community, according to Good Friends, a Buddhist group in Seoul.
