U.N. agency warns of food crisis in North Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea faces a looming food and humanitarian crisis after a poor harvest that has caused food prices to skyrocket and supplies to dwindle, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.

Agricultural experts in Seoul have said the shortfall, the result of flood damage last year, high commodity prices and political wrangling with major food donor South Korea, may be one of the worst since famine hit North Korea in the 1990s.

"The food security situation in the DPRK (North Korea) is clearly bad and getting worse," said Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme's regional director for Asia.

"It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy."

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation said in late March it expects North Korea to have a shortfall of about 1.66 million metric tons in cereals for the year ending in October 2008, which would be the largest deficit in about seven years.

North Korea, which even with a good harvest still falls about 1 million metric tons or 20 percent short of what it needs, relies heavily on aid from China, South Korea and U.N. aid agencies to fill the gap.

South Korea has yet to send help this year and China, trying to stem a rise in commodity prices at home, appears unwilling to provide major assistance.

A U.N. official based in Asia told Reuters last week that North Korea was seeking international help.

The WFP has an operation in North Korea after reaching an agreement with the communist state to provide 75,000 metric tons of food a year to 1.2 million of the North's 23 million people.

"Where we do have access, we see this combination of reduced (food) supplies and rising costs," the Bangkok-based Banbury told Reuters by telephone.

He noted that in some places the price of rice has more than doubled in a year with 1 kg costing about one-third of the monthly salary of an average worker.

"We have it within our ability to avert a famine. We see the crisis on the horizon, we know what we have to do to address it," Banbury said by telephone from Bangkok.

A famine in the mid-to-late 1990s killed more than 1 million, various groups have estimated.

North Korea will be high on the agenda when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office in February, holds his first summit with President George W. Bush this week in Washington.

Lee's conservative government has said there would no longer be a free ride for its capricious neighbor and it will tie aid to progress the North makes on ending its nuclear arms program.

North Korea for years has been able to receive about half a million metric tons of rice, with few questions asked, by left-of-centre South Korean governments who have seen the handouts as a small price to pay to keep the peninsula stable.

"The needs in the country far surpass the WFP operation," Banbury said.

"It would be very irresponsible for the international community to stand by and watch the food security in the DPRK deteriorate. I am confident that this will not happen."

(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Alex Richardson)