U.N. Agency Reports Worst Drought in 16 Years in North Korea.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is suffering its worst drought in 16 years, a United Nations agency reported on Friday, raising fears of worsening food shortages in the country, where children and other vulnerable groups have suffered malnutrition for years.
North Korea’s production of staple crops for this year, including rice, corn, potatoes and soybeans, has been severely damaged by prolonged dry spells “threatening food security for a large part of its population,” the agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, said in a report prepared in collaboration with the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.
Seasonal rainfall in the main cereal-producing regions is below that of 2001, when grain production fell to a record low of two million tons, Vincent Martin, the agency’s representative in North Korea, said in a news release.
Because of the drought, the production of early season crops that are harvested in June, including wheat, barley and potatoes, dropped to 310,000 tons, more than 30 percent below last year’s 450,000 tons, it said.
But North Korea did not appear to help itself.
Despite United Nations sanctions, North Korea’s external trade grew by an estimated 4.7 percent to $6.55 billion last year, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, a government-invested organization in South Korea, said on Friday.
North Korea’s trade with China grew 6.1 percent to $6 billion last year, the agency said.
China accounts for more than 90 percent of the North’s external trade.
Also on Friday, South Korea’s central bank, the Bank of Korea, said that the North Korean economy grew by an estimated 3.9 percent last year.