Almost 300 dead or missing in N Korea floods

North Korean passersby make their way through a flooded street in Pyongyang, North Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 , in this image made from television. Severe floods caused by days of heavy rains in North Korea have left at least 200 people dead or missing and will hamper the country's ability to feed itself for at least a year, an international aid group operating in the country said Tuesday. (AP Photo/APTN)


Almost 300 dead or missing in N Korea floods



Almost 300 people are dead or missing in floods in North Korea, an aid agency said, as the communist state painted a grim picture of inundated crops and homes, flooded mines and washed-out roads.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said 214 were killed and 80 are missing in what it has called the worst floods to hit the impoverished country in a decade.
The acting head of the IFRC delegation in Pyongyang, Terje Lysholm, told AFP by phone that the figures - the first detailed casualty count - came from the government.
Official data says some 300,000 people are homeless and 11 per cent of the grain harvest - equivalent to some 450,000 tons - was lost in a country which already needs foreign aid to feed its people.
In the latest unusually detailed report from the reclusive state, an official broadcasting station said main roads, including one linking the capital Pyongyang to the eastern city of Wonsan, were badly damaged.
"Korean People's Army soldiers are also out in force to stage hectic struggles to restore roads," it said, as quoted by Seoul's Yonhap news agency.
Some 46,580 homes of 88,400 families were destroyed or damaged, 400 commercial plants and 20 mines were flooded and landslides cut railways in 43 places, official media said.
It said the showpiece capital was hit from August 7-11 by record rainfall which swelled the Taedong River to danger levels and left some streets under two metres of water.
Traffic, electricity and communications networks were disrupted, parks were buried under silt and the homes of 6,400 families in the city were inundated, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.
The IFRC has said at least 100,000 hectares of farmland were inundated nationwide but it reported improved weather on Thursday (local time).
"There is no rain today and the Taedong River level has decreased a lot," Mr Lysholm said.
Food shortfall
North Korea faced a food shortfall this year of one million tonnes, or 20 per cent of its needs, even before the floods hit. It suffered a famine in the mid- to late 1990s which killed hundreds of thousands.
The World Food Program (WFP) said it has proposed an emergency program to feed 500,000 people for a month and is awaiting Pyongyang's response.
If the North approves this, the WFP will immediately launch an international appeal for funds to avoid having to cut back on its existing program, its regional spokesman Paul Risley said.
The UN agency currently feeds 750,000 people, mainly children and pregnant or nursing women, and plans to expand this to 1.9 million by next month.
Mr Risley told AFP the speed with which Pyongyang publicised damage could indicate the severity of the situation.
"Political developments may also have increased the government's willingness to work more closely with international organisations," he said, citing the North's commitment to denuclearise and the upcoming inter-Korean summit.
But some analysts say the North may have exaggerated damage to secure aid.
"North Korea in recent years has tended to exaggerate losses from natural disasters to obtain as much outside aid as possible," Professor Nam Sung-Wook of Korea University told AFP.
Lee Young-Hoon, an expert on North Korea at the central bank, could not say if damage had been exaggerated but added that flooding was largely man-made.
"Since the North reached out to the outside for help following the disasters in the mid-1990s, it has been pretty open about any damage from natural disasters, apparently being conscious of outside aid," he said.
"Much of the blame for the damage should be put on the disastrous failure in policies, especially in agriculture.
"Because of the silt from deforested mountains and terraced rice paddies, riverbeds are rising every year."

- AFP