video transcript

These orphans are the living embodiment of what North Korea says is a food crisis made even worse by a severe winter. Summer floods have added to the misery. In short, they're starving. The band around this girl's spindly arm shows she's underweight. She was one of 12 in this group in the orange or red danger zones. Without proper food and treatment their very lives are at stake. Some children are so malnourished they need hospital treatment. Doctors say the food shortages are damaging their chances of recovery. SOUNDBITE: Kim Chol Jun, paediatrician at Haeju Primary and Secondary School for Orphans, saying (Korean): "Because of the flooding the children are suffering from diarrhoea and digestive problems. The flooding is the reason that the malnourished children are not recovering faster." This video was shot by Reuters who were invited into the country by North Korea's government. Their visit to a key farming province in the nation's rural bread basket was unprecedented. It was also tightly controlled. Nutrition experts from Medecins Sans Frontieres who were with the team found similar cases of malnutrition at other similar institutions. But they say their findings are not statistically representative. Farm manager Pak Su-dong says natural disasters have reduced food output drastically. SOUNDBITE: Pak Su-dong, manager of the Sok Sa-Ri co-operative farm, saying (Korean): "We had heavy rain for two months from July and that's why the maize couldn't get enough nutrients to grow properly. We now expect to harvest only 15 per cent of the maize output we'd originally planned." Marcus Prior of the World Food Programme is warning food rations are dangerously low. SOUNDBITE: Marcus Prior, World Food Programme Asia spokesman, saying (English): "Food distributions through the national public distributions system are down to only 200 grammes per person per day which is really about a third of an adult's normal requirements per day." North Korea is appealing for food. And there's the problem. The United States suspended aid to North Korea in 2008 in a dispute over how it was monitored. Washington says it will only re-start aid shipments if South Korea agrees. South Korea is sceptical of Pyongyang's latest pleas for food, saying it's just ditched plans to send flood help because Pyongyang didn't respond to its offer. Caught in the middle are the residents of North Korea's rural areas, some of whom will pay with their lives. Paul Chapman, Reuters