North Korea has ordered its embassies and diplomatic offices around the world to issue new appeals for food aid as the communist nation is once against facing starvation.
North Korea has been plagued by floods, a brutal winter that has reduced crops output, and a disease outbreak that killed thousands of livestock. The United Nations World Food Program said its current food supply could sustain operations there for only another month,
The Washington Post reports.
But the United States and other Western countries are wary about sending food into a corrupt distribution system that often delivers aid largely to the military or sells the food at a steep profit.
Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s top East Asia official, said the United States “has no plans for any contributions at this time.”
An estimated 1 million North Koreans died in a famine in the early and mid-1990s.
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