wfn.org | Food Aid Official Denies North Korea "Horror Stories"

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30-July-1998 
98246 
 
    Food Aid Official Denies North Korea "Horror Stories" 
 
    by Chris Herlinger 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
NEW YORK-North Korea is still facing a critical food shortage, but a 
Western relief coordinator based there sees no evidence to justify media 
reports of a "killer" famine claiming millions of lives and forcing people 
into cannibalism. 
 
    "I just don't give any kind of credence to some of these horror 
stories," said Erich Weingartner, who serves as a liaison officer for the 
United Nations World Food Program in Pyongyang, North Korea, assisting 
relief shipments from nongovernmental organizations.  "I can only stick to 
what I see, and that's already bad enough," he said.  "There remains 
long-term, pervasive need." 
 
    Speaking last week to journalists and church and relief agency 
officials in New York and Washington, Weingartner said it was almost 
impossible to determine the exact toll of a three-year food shortage caused 
by drought and flooding.  "We have to be extremely careful in extrapolating 
these numbers," he said. 
 
    During an international "fasting day" in April to call attention to 
North Korea's plight, the Buddhist Sharing Movement, based in South Korea, 
said as many as 3.5 million North Koreans could have died.  Other aid 
agencies and media reported that two million people, roughly 10 percent of 
the population, had died.  But after visiting North Korea last month, 
Jean-Jacques Graisse, a senior World Food Program official, said he doubted 
reports of cannibalism and widespread famine. 
 
    In an interview with ENI, Weingartner said the high numbers were 
apparently estimates based on accounts of those from areas where food 
shortages had been particularly acute.  "I know there are conditions in 
which people have been deprived of food but I just don't see evidence of 
numbers that large."  If two million people had died, he said, "we'd see 
more signs on the edges." 
 
    Weingartner said he and other aid agency officials working in North 
Korea traveled widely and relatively freely, and no one had seen any 
evidence of some of the more gruesome, unconfirmed rumors - such as mounds 
of bodies stacked at railroad stations awaiting transport and burial. 
 
    "If we could confirm every rumor we hear, we would," he told ENI.  "But 
we have little time as it is, responding to the needs we know do exist." 
 
    Conditions were serious, he said.  "What I have seen are people on the 
verge of dying in hospitals."  Diets of grass, tree bark and seaweed were 
not  uncommon.  Those lucky enough to be able to plant vegetables were 
doing so everywhere, even on railroad slopes.  Diarrhea was a problem due 
to a shortage of medicines and a breakdown in North Korea's water 
purification system. 
 
    While in the U.S., Weingartner told church officials that food 
shortages would mean that emergency aid and long-term development 
assistance were still needed.  A reduction in government food relief, 
spurred in part by international "aid fatigue," would make it difficult to 
make up for North Korea's 1998 food deficit, estimated at about 1.8 million 
tons. 
 
    Besides offering food and development assistance, churches could, 
according to Weingartner, serve as advocates by acting as a "bridge" 
between communist North Korea and the West as North Korea's political and 
economic isolation continued to ease and as attempts to unify North and 
South Korea progressed. 
 
    Weingartner is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada 
and a former official of the World Council of Churches.  His visit was 
hosted by Church World Service, the relief and development agency of the 
National Council of  Churches in the U.S., which nominated Weingartner to 
his post. 

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