Things look bad for North Korea after floods by Corina Ciubotaru

Massive floods have wreaked havoc in North Korea; in some regions rain levels reached 2 feet and caused the worst damage this decade. 30,000 houses were destroyed and over 100,000 hectares of farmland flooded, and now the U.S. and South Korea are thinking of aiding the country that can barely sustain itself even without natural disasters occurring. It is a frequent recipient of foreign food aid but it hasn't called for help yet in this case, even though a tenth of the country's annual grain harvest has been devastated. Even before the floods, North Korea faced a food shortfall of about 20% of its needs and has issued a preliminary help request to the UN. The organization made a survey and decided the country may need long-term assistance to recover and not be affected by famine, as was the case in the late '90s, when hundreds of thousands of people died. Electrical and railway lines have also been damaged, adding to the already grim situation of electrical power in the communist nation. Recent floods are presumably not going to affect the meeting between North and South Korean leaders later this month. South Korea has been making efforts in recent years to aid its southern neighbor and to find ways of uniting the countries once again. Families divided by the world's most fortified border have been allowed to reunite briefly on some occasions, and the two Koreas share an industrial park in a border city, benefiting from the North cheap labor force and the South high-tech machinery.

related story: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070814/tsc-nkorea-weather-floods-c2ff8aa_2.html

by Corina Ciubotaru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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