North Korea is facing a shortage of cereals because of recent heavy rains but there are indications chronic food shortage in the country is slowly easing, a senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization has noted.
Damage caused by the recent rain and consequential floods is not likely to reduce North Korea’s crop production significantly, according to Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO’s regional representative in Asia.
“My understanding from my visit there yesterday was that the damage was not so significant,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.
Konuma did note that North Korea is facing a shortage of some 600,000 tons of cereal despite recent assistance from the European Union, Russia and several U.N. agencies.
The FAO also said humanitarian assistance to the reclusive Asian country ”has decreased tenfold” over the past decade. To date, roughly 6 million North Koreans urgently need food aid.
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