North Korea could suspend food rations for ordinary citizens in Pyongyang next month due to its worsening famine, a South Korean aid group warned Sunday. The North Korean capital has had a better food supply than other areas in the Stalinist state despite a chronic food shortage since the 1990s.
“Pyongyang is no longer a safe zone in food supply,” Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group for North Koreans, said in a newsletter.
“Food supply officials in Pyongyang say food rations lasted only 10 days in April and will be suspended for ordinary citizens beginning in May,” the group said. The aid group said big businesses and state organizations would remain unaffected but warned that if food rations are halted for months, a growing number of North Koreans will migrate to China in search of food. North Korea has relied on outside handouts to feed its 23 million population as a failed policy and a series of natural disasters in the mid-1990s hurt grain production. But United Nations food aid to North Korea ended late last year after Pyongyang said it no longer needed emergency shipments from the World Food Programme (WFP) and other international humanitarian agencies. |