North Korean Children May Risk Permanent Ills

BEIJING — North Korea’s children are so malnourished that they may never recover fully, and harvests this fall could be as little as one-eighth of normal because of a severe drought, a Red Cross official said Sunday.

“They’ve already written off the corn crop,” said Jon Valfells of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, who returned Saturday from a 10-day tour of relief centers in the hunger-stricken country.

In addition, Valfells said, farmers have been told to dig drainage channels to protect the tiny rice crop because dry seasons often are followed by torrential rains.

This will be the third straight bad harvest for North Korea, a hard-line Communist nation already suffering from agricultural mismanagement and floods that ravaged crops in 1995 and 1996.

Food shortages have forced North Korea to set aside its tradition of defiant self-reliance and accept thousands of tons of food from China, Japan, rival South Korea and the United States.

In North Hwanghae province, the most fertile area in North Korea, nine of 10 reservoirs are dry and farmers were tearing out withered cornstalks early to plant autumn crops of cabbage and soybeans, Valfells said.

“There were almost no ears of corn on these stalks,” Valfells said.

Farmers in North Hwanghae province expect to harvest as little as one-eighth to one-fifth of normal yields, Valfells said.

North Korean officials told relief agencies last month that 37% of children are malnourished.

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Valfells said doctors told him that because of food shortages in 1995 and 1996, children have gone hungry so long that many will suffer stunted growth and mental problems even if they start eating well again.

“The most striking thing was that there were these 3-year-old children who have never had enough to eat in their whole lives,” he said. “That’s a whole generation being affected.”

In the city of Huichon in the northwest, 50 of the 70 children in one hospital ward were there for hunger-related problems, Valfells said, including one 3-year-old boy who weighed just 11 pounds.

Valfells showed reporters pictures of children with stick-like limbs, hair falling out, skin disorders and other signs of malnutrition.

“We were in one home where there was an 11-year-old boy, and he just sat in the corner for 45 minutes and never moved,” he said.