By Kim Young-jin
The speaker of North Korea’s parliament has asked Britain for food aid, as the urgency of Pyongyang’s assistance requests appear to be growing, according to Voice of America (VOA).
Choe Tae Bok, chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, made the appeal during a trip to Britain from March 28 to 31 at the invitation of the British-North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group.
British lawmaker David Alton told VOA that the request was made in a meeting with officials in London.
Choe stressed that the next two months would be most critical for the North, Alton said.
It was the latest attempt from the impoverished North to secure outside help after floods last summer and a brutally cold winter.
The North has long suffered from food shortages due to its isolation and mismanagement of the economy. The situation worsened due to international sanctions imposed for its missile and nuclear tests.
A U.N. report released last month said the North needs 434,000 tons of food from outside to feed 6 million of its people, citing the findings of a recent fact-finding trip to the North.
Representatives of South Korean aid organizations say that recent calls for help from North Korean officials carry a heightened sense of urgency due to projections of a poor spring harvest.
“They are saying that if aid is not sent, many people are in danger of starvation,” one representative of a local civic group said on condition of anonymity. “This time around the request seems more urgent, desperate even.”
Last week, Seoul lifted its moratorium on civic-sector humanitarian assistance to the North, allowing a non-governmental organization to send medicine across the border.
But the government says Pyongyang must take measures to improve inter-Korean ties, including apologizing for two deadly provocations last year, before government-level aid can be resumed.
Officials here are wary that the North may be trying to stockpile ahead of 2012, the year Pyongyang has vowed to emerge as a powerful state, saying that staple food output actually increased slightly last year.
South Korean food aid to the North has been halted since 2008, when the Lee Myung-bak administration tied its provision to denuclearization efforts by Pyongyang.