Amid Dire Food Shortage, U.S. Aid Arrives in North Korea
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SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of tons of food from America have started flowing into North Korea, the U.N. food agency said yesterday, as aid groups warned that the impoverished nation faces food shortages not seen since 2001.
A freighter carrying 37,000 tons of wheat arrived Sunday night after North Korea agreed to open up to greatly expanded international aid. The shipment was the first installment of 500,000 tons in assistance promised by Washington, the World Food Program said.
The aid, however, was not directly related to the ongoing nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang. U.S. officials have repeatedly said they do not use food for diplomatic coercion.
The shipment arrived just days after the North delivered an atomic declaration and blew up the cooling tower at its main reactor site, in a sign of its commitment not to make more plutonium for bombs.
In exchange, the U.S. lifted some economic sanctions and said it would remove the country from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said there was “zero linkage” between progress on nuclear talks and the food delivery’s timing. He said America has spent months working with the WFP to make sure food delivery could be properly monitored.
“We do not link food assistance, whether that’s to North Korea or Zimbabwe or any other country, to political considerations. We do that based on humanitarian concerns,” Mr. Casey said.
Sunday’s wheat shipment will be enough for the WFP to expand its operations to feed more than 5 million people, up from 1.2 million people now getting international aid. The WFP hopes to start distributing the American-provided food within two weeks.
U.N. agencies are conducting a food survey — expected to be completed in mid-July — to determine where to distribute the aid, but the WFP said preliminary reports “indicate a high level of food insecurity.”
The country’s regular annual shortages were expected to worsen because of floods last summer that devastated the agricultural heartland. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization has said North Korea’s cereal crop will fall more than 1.5 million tons short this year, the largest food deficit since 2001.
