The World Food Programme is slashing food rations for North Korea's hungry children, women and the elderly and said on Saturday that the problem would worsen if it is unable to raise new cash and food pledges. The WFP has been active in the isolated North Korea since 1995, when it was invited to help ease widespread famine after natural disasters and bad harvests. Aid experts say more than 1 million people have died. "We've already had to make some cutbacks. We stopped giving vegetable oil to 900,000 elderly people already," Anthony Banbury, the WFP's Asia regional director, told a news conference in Beijing after a five-day trip to North Korea - his third.
"As of next week, we have to stop providing vegetable oil ration to kindergarten children, nurseries and pregnant and nursing women," said Banbury, who made a stopover in Beijing on his way to Bangkok where he is based.
Cutting rations of vegetable oil, which is enriched with vitamins, would have a significant nutritional impact on the recipients, many of whom are malnourished children.
The WFP will also stop providing pulses to about 1.2 million women and children in May and cereals to about one million primary school children, pregnant and nursing women and the elderly in June, Banbury said.
"The impact of those cuts could be extremely tragic, truly tragic for ... the very vulnerable people whom WFP is trying to reach," he said.
The WFP aims to provide half a million tonnes of food to feed 6.5 million of North Korea's 22.5 million people this year.
North Korea has been embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the United States, which experts say does not help. Six-party talks involving the United States, the two Koreas, host China, Japan and Russia have been stalled since last June.
Japan was the largest donor last year, accounting for about half of the cash and food aid raised, followed by South Korea and the United States.
"The bad news is those stocks are close to running out," Banbury said.
"Unless we get on a very urgent basis new contributions in the coming weeks, we're going to face these very serious cuts," he said. "As good as things have been these past few months, they're about to get much worse."
Secretive North Korea has opened up its economy slightly, allowing a limited free market and food prices soared.
Banbury dismissed media speculation that WFP donations may have ended up in the market.
North Korea cut the number of visits by the WFP to monitor the distribution of food aid to 300 from 500 a month last year.
"There were certain segments of the North Korean authorities that were uncomfortable with WFP activities, the large number of visits we were making, the intrusiveness of those visits," Banbury said.
"They decided to change our operating conditions. They started putting more limits as of September of last year on our operating conditions, on our monitoring," he said.
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