Drought-hit North Korea seen able to avoid food crisis

Jack Kim and James Pearson in Reuters: North Korea has updated farming methods and switched crops that could help soften the blow of drought and avert a disastrous food shortage, an aid worker and an analyst said on Sunday, after a U.N. official warned of another "huge food deficit".

Impoverished North Korea, which suffered a deadly famine in the 1990s, has seen international food aid fall sharply because of its restrictions on humanitarian workers and reluctance to allow monitoring of food distribution.

Food supplies had since improved and production has been at the highest levels, resulting in the lowest shortfall last year since the mid-2000s, according to independent South Korean studies. "Supply this year will be even more stable and any shortfall is likely to be met sufficiently by imports," said Kwon Tae-jin of the GSnJ Institute in Seoul, an expert on North Korean agriculture.

"Improvement in the supply of food isn't likely by chance or a temporary situation," he said, crediting an increased allocation of resources in agriculture. Linda Lewis, of the American Friends Service Committee, an NGO running farm projects in North Korea, said she had heard the new farm management system was helping....

A farm in North Korea, shot by Nicor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

North Korean food harvest improving, but still tight: FAO

Reuters: Food production in North Korea has risen for a second year but the impoverished country still faces shortages and widespread malnutrition, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday. The U.N. organization forecast a 10 percent increase in the main 2012 harvests and 2013 early season crops compared with a year earlier, and said production was expected to hit 5.8 million metric tons.

The country faced a staple food deficit of 207,000 metric tons, the lowest in many years, but 2.8 million people remained vulnerable to undernutrition, the FAO added.

The body issued its findings after carrying out a mission to the isolated country to measure its cereal production.

"DPR Korea still needs international help," Kisan Gunjal, FAO economist and the mission's co-leader, said in a statement. "The new harvest figures are good news, but the lack of proteins and fats in the diet is alarming."...

Typhoon Sanba batters both Koreas, drenches Japan

NBC News: A powerful typhoon lashed North and South Korea with strong wind and heavy rain Monday, killing at least one person, leaving dozens of others homeless and cutting power to many homes and businesses in the South.

In North Korea, rain drenched parts of the country, including the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, but did not reach the capital, Pyongyang, which was windy Monday but was spared the heavy rains that lashed the South Korean capital.

Typhoon Sanba, which battered southern South Korea around midday Monday, was pushing northward and expected to move into eastern waters later in the day.

Sanba knocked out power to about 26,900 homes and shops in South Korea, the state-run National Emergency Management Agency said. The storm also forced cancelations of about 330 flights and 170 ferries, it said. Huge waves battered the southern coast.

A 50-year-old woman died in a landslide in southeastern South Korea, and another woman was injured in a separate landslide, agency officials said. More than 170 people were left homeless, they said.

Before reaching South Korea, the storm hit Japan. About 67,000 homes in southwestern Japan lost power and some areas flooded. A man drowned Sunday while swimming in high waves off the southern Japanese island of Ishigaki, according to the coast guard....

Typhoon Sanba on September 15, 2012

Vietnam donates rice to tackle hunger in flood-hit North Korea

Kate Hodal in the globaldevelopment blog in the Guardian (UK): Vietnam will donate 5,000 tonnes of rice to North Korea after recent flooding, which has left crops devastated, more than 160 people dead and 212,200 homeless, according to state media.

The donation may help assuage fears of a widespread famine like the one that killed an estimated 1 million in the 1990s. But UN officials warned on Thursday that the full crop damage and food scarcity facing North Korea won't be known until an assessment is completed next month.

More than 65,000 hectares of farmland have been washed away since floods began in late June, following a severe drought. Around 5,000 houses, 300 public buildings and 60 factories have been destroyed by the floods, renewing concerns about Pyongyang's capacity to feed its people and to carry out damage control. UN agencies said in June that two-thirds of the country's 24 million population were facing chronic food shortages.

North Korea is prone to flooding as much of its mountainous terrain has been deforested to grow crops on terraces. This creates landslides in heavy rains, says Leeds University Korea analyst Aidan Foster-Carter. "North Korea is incredibly vulnerable to natural disasters because of their natural environment and what they've done to it over the years," he says. "Before the country was divided in 1945, the south was the rice bowl … [Now] North Korea is about 1m tonnes short of food every year."...

Locator map showing Vietnam and North and South Korea, created by Betoseha, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

North Koreans urgently need drinking water after floods

Terra Daily via AFP: Tens of thousands of flood-hit North Korean families urgently need clean drinking water to prevent disease outbreaks, UN agencies said Thursday. The agencies and other aid groups reported their assessment a day after state media reported a total of 119 deaths and major crop damage in recent weeks in the food-scarce nation.

The UN said wells have been contaminated by overflowing latrines, creating a high risk of a diarrhoea outbreak, while floods had damaged water sources and pumping stations. Citing government figures, it said about 50,000 families in six badly-hit counties would need purification tablets or other help to secure clean water.

The UN children's fund UNICEF has ordered 10 million tablets along with other materials. Drugs and IV fluids were badly needed. The report said a hospital in Chonnae county had already seen a fourfold rise in diarrhoea cases. "In general, unless... needs are addressed, rapid increase in diarrhoea, skin infection and respiratory infections could occur."...

North Korean soldiers near the Military Demarcation Line, shot by SRA JEFFREY ALLEN, public domain

Flood-hit North Korea braces for more heavy rain

Radio Australia: State media says heavy rains are expected in most parts of the country over the next two days, with downpours set to deluge the west coast and the northern province of Jagang. More than 200 millimetres are forecast in some areas.

The warning comes a day after North Korea revealed floods which began on July 18 killed 88 people, injured more than 130, and left almost 63,000 people homeless. State-run KCNA says more than 30,000 hectares of farmland have been 'washed away', with roads and factories destroyed.

After decades of deforestation the impoverished North is particularly vulnerable to flooding. Dozens were killed or injured by a storm and torrential rains in June and July last year, which left thousands homeless and large areas of farmland flooded.

With rugged terrain and outmoded agricultural practices, the communist state faces serious difficulties in feeding its 24 million people. Hundreds of thousands died during a famine in the mid to late 1990s. Following a visit to the country, UN agencies estimated last November that three million people would need food aid in 2012....

Korea Bay in North Korea, via NASA

North Korea says severe drought threatens crops, but little aid likely

Washington Post via the AP: North Korea is reporting a serious drought that could worsen already critical food shortages, but help is unlikely to come from the United States and South Korea following Pyongyang’s widely criticized rocket launch.

North Korea has had little rain since April 27, with the country’s western coastal areas particularly hard hit, according to a government weather agency in Pyongyang. The dry spell threatened to damage crops, officials said, as the country enters a critical planting season and as food supplies from the last harvest dwindle.

In at least one area of South Phyongan Province where journalists from The Associated Press were allowed to visit, the sun-baked fields appeared parched and cracked, and farmers complained of extreme drought conditions. Deeply tanned men, and women in sun bonnets, worked over cabbages and corn seedlings. Farmers cupped individual seedlings as they poured water from blue buckets onto the parched red soil.

“I’ve been working at the farm for more than 30 years, but I have never experienced this kind of severe drought,” An Song Min, a farmer at the Tokhae Cooperative Farm in the Nampho area, told the AP. It was not clear whether the conditions around Nampho were representative of a wider region. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said it had not yet visited the affected regions to confirm the extent and severity of the reported drought....

Agroforestry is not rocket science but it might save DPR Korea

Terra Daily via SPX: There is more going on in DPR Korea than rocket science: local people in collaboration with natural resources scientists are taking control of their food supply through agroforestry. This is according to a report published in Agroforestry Systems journal.

The report notes that in DPR Korea a bottom-up participatory process of developing locally appropriate agroforestry has been a revelation to many and is helping to reverse the chronic food shortages and land degradation of the 1990s.

Xu Jian Chu, lead author of the report and head of the East Asia Node of the World Agroforestry Centre, says that, "The emergence of agroforestry as a way of managing sloping land highlights how food technology innovations can take root once social and institutional constraints to land access have been reduced."

... In the early 2000s, in order to reverse degradation, increase yields and generate more income from mountains and hills, the Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection introduced the Sloping Land Management project.

The project uses innovative agroforestry technologies to provide food, fodder and other products for local people while restoring degraded land. Working through partners, the project helped establish user groups, design agroforestry systems and implement agroforestry trials with monitoring and evaluation occurring at all levels....

The Joint Security Area on the Korean Peninsula, shot by UNC - CFC - USFK, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Rain leaves trail of destruction in North Korea

At least South Korea has a functioning disaster relief system whose shortcomings have already been vigorously criticized. It's doubtful that we'll ever get an account of what's going on in North Korea. From Terra Daily via AFP: Heavy rains that left 59 people dead in South Korea last week also affected the North, flooding farmland, destroying bridges and damaging roads and railways, Pyongyang's state media reported Sunday.

Korean Central Television and Korean Central Broadcasting Station said Chongdan County in South Hwanghae province had received 522 millimetres (more than 20 inches) of rain in 12 hours on Tuesday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

More than 14,200 hectares (35,000 acres) of farmland in the county were flooded along with a further 10,200 hectares in Yonan County, both in the west of the country, northwest of Seoul, it said. It said that other counties were suffered heavy rain over the weekend, and that in Yonan alone, 13 bridges were destroyed, while roads and railways across the province were also damaged.

There was no word on casualties. The floods will deepen concerns about North Korea's ability to feed its people, who already face severe food shortages....

China flood fears along North Korea border

BBC: China has suspended traffic on the Yalu river, which marks the border with North Korea, because of record rainfall in an area already badly hit by floods. More than 40,000 people have been moved from their homes in the Chinese border city of Dandong.

Red Cross workers in North Korea have reported heavy damage by floods in the east of the country. They say buildings, bridges and roads have been destroyed, but warnings had enabled many to move to higher ground.

The Yalu river in north-east China has swollen to critical levels after two weeks of unprecedented rainfall, Chinese state media reported. It has led to fears of mass flooding in North Korea, which, according to its official news agency, suffered heavy flood damage in July with more than 5,000 houses destroyed.

The Korean Central News Agency said 360 buildings, including clinics, bridges and factories, had also been destroyed and huge swathes of farmland rendered useless by flash floods. There have been no reports of serious injuries or fatalities, but such information is difficult to verify outside the reclusive state.

A team of Red Cross workers in North Korea's South Hamgyong province told the BBC that they had witnessed widespread destruction. Doctors told the Red Cross that a number of people, especially the elderly, were suffering from shock and had "clear symptoms of traumatic stress reactions"….

A bridge across the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea, shot by Sun417

North Korea engulfed with multiple fires: NASA image

Hwang Doo-hyong in Yonghap News: Multiple fires broke out in the northeastern part of North Korea recently, sending a plume of smoke to the East Sea between the North and Japan, a picture released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wednesday shows.

The true-color image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on Oct. 15, shows big plumes extending eastward and covering skies of northeastern North Korea and part of the East Sea.

"The smoke plumes blow uniformly eastward, some of the individual plumes coalescing into a single large plume over the sea," the caption of the image said. "Red outlines indicate hotspots associated with active fires, although not all the fires have visible hotspots."

North Korean media have not yet reported the fires. South Korean intelligence officials said that they were not sure about the nature of the plumes….

Shot from NASA, by way of Yonghap News