Desperate North Korea seeks food aid: UN official

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - Impoverished North Korea is seeking international aid to battle one of its worst food shortfalls in years, a senior U.N. official based in Asia said on Friday.

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

"The North Koreans know that they are facing a difficult situation and have made it increasingly clear in the past few weeks that they will need outside assistance to meet their growing needs," the U.N. official said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

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

The UN official said it was clear from a variety of sources that the food security situation was worsening in North Korea and that it needed to be addressed.

Last month Kwon Tae-jin, an expert on the North's agriculture sector at the South's Korea Rural Economic Institute told Reuters that if South Korea and other nations did not send food aid, the North would be faced with a food crisis worse than the one in the 90s.

A famine in the mid-to-late 1990s killed more than 1 million North Koreans in a country of about 23 million.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in late March it sees the North having a shortfall of about 1.66 million tonnes in cereals for the year ending in October 2008.