North Korea Near Famine, U.N. Reports

BEIJING — Hunger is tightening its grip on North Korea, and thin, lethargic children are the harbingers of a famine that could strike the impoverished Stalinist state as early as this month, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

Already meager food rations are in danger of disappearing in a country racked by devastating floods, failed harvests and a wheezing Communist economy, said Catherine Bertini, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Program.

A thin diet of rice, roots and dried leaves has stunted the growth of children in villages still trying to recover from summer floods in 1995 and 1996, Bertini told a news conference.

“Clearly, clearly the children are smaller,” she said.

The government has been distributing 3 1/2 ounces of rice a day to each person, a ration that provides just one-fifth the daily calories needed by an adult, Bertini said.

The WFP will start handing out 100,000 tons of grains and soybeans to farmers April 1, with 20% of that going to children younger than 5, she said. But program officials hope to raise an additional $41 million to buy another 100,000 tons of grains to target children younger than 6, she said.