200 killed in North Korea floods

Torrential rains in North Korea have forced thousands of families from their homes and left at least 200 people dead, an aid official said.

To cope with damage from the storms, the North has asked the United Nations to assess the situation in affected regions as part of a preliminary request for assistance – an indication of the dire situation in the impoverished nation.

North Korea struggles to provide for its people and as many as 2 million people died from famine that began in the mid-1990s that the government blamed on natural disasters, but was also caused by outdated farming methods and the loss of the country’s Soviet benefactor.

Because of the food shortages, regular North Koreans seek to use all possible arable land in the mountainous country to grow food – denuding vast hillsides of natural vegetation and therefore increasing the risk of landslides when heavy rains strike.

In the latest floods that began last week, North Korean state media reported that “hundreds” were dead or missing, without giving further detail on casualties.

“The material damage so far is estimated to be very big,” the official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday. “This unceasing heavy rain destroyed the nation’s major railways, roads and bridges, suspended power supply and cut off the communications network.”

North Korean officials told the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that 200 people were dead or missing across the country, acting delegation head Terje Lysholm told The Associated Press from Pyongyang.

Lysholm said a total of 63,300 families had been affected by the weather, which destroyed 30,000 homes. Of those, 20,000 houses were in worst-hit Kangwon province, where blocked roads were preventing aid workers from assessing the damage.

Some 247,100 acres of farmland had also been washed away, Lysholm said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also assured North Korea’s UN ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, that the world body would do all it could to mitigate the consequences of the floods, Montas said.

Washington said it would look into what help it might be able to channel through the United Nations.