The severe drought in North Korea has caused the loss of 70 percent of the maize crop, which will worsen the food situation for the country already on the brink of famine, the U.N. said Monday.
``A United Nations Interagency group warned today that the DPRK (North Korea) is suffering from a severe drought that has caused the loss of 70 percent of the maize crop,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
``It will dramatically reduce the availability of cereals for the period November 1997 to October 1998.''
The food situation is also expected to worsen in August and September ``as part of this crop had been earmarked for consumption as 'green corn'.''
The bleak U.N. report came less that 24 hours after aid workers warned that the searing drought had destroyed hopes the famine-struck nation might recover food self-sufficiency this year.
Tricia Parker, program director of Oxfam Hong Kong, said North Koreans had hoped to get back on their feet after this harvest, ``but the drought has put an end to that.''
Eckhard said a crop and food supply assessment mission will be going to North Korea next week to determine the damage.
According to a press release by the U.N., North Korea had more than 60 days without rain and high temperatures in the mid-30s (90s Fahrenheit) at the most critical time, resulting in the loss of all non-irrigated maize planted and transplanted between May 5-15.
It said the loss of 1.5 million tons of maize ``has worsened an already bleak situation and will cause a severe food shortage.''
``The present findings, as well as information received from several other sources indicate that, without doubt, the severity of the drought has encompassed the whole country,'' the release said.
``It is absolutely disastrous. It is going to be a major catastrophe that no one realized because they kept on hoping that it would rain tomorrow,'' it quoted FAO adviser Roberto Christen as saying.
Christen had travelled with the U.N. Interagency staff to several parts of North Korea to assess the damage to the maize crop between July 22-31.
Parker and Oxfam representatives from Australia and Britain visited collective farms, a kindergarten, nursery, paediatric hospital and orphanage in late July.
The team said they saw children who still had the energy being dispatched to the fields with buckets to water crops that could be saved. as the nation moved into the eighth week of abnormally high temperatures and virtually no rain.
July is usually a wet month in North Korea, with more than 200 millimeters (eight inches) of rain. July and September rains usually account for 50 percent of annual rainfall.
``Our message is of acute and continuing emergency requiring urgent and long-term sustained assistance from the international community,'' Parker said.
``What we saw really shook all of us. There really is almost no food in North Korea and the only supplies are from international donors. People just have to wait for deliveries.''
North Korea, which has seen its economy shrink by one-third and its erstwhile allies vanish since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is already devastated by two consecutive years of flood.
Experts say up to 80 percent of North Korean youngsters were suffering from malnutrition.