Contact local Red Cross on how to help. The Boston Globe, August 20, 1998. It was the first time that US government observers have confirmed the toll taken by North Korea's growing famine since word trickled out last summer of the country's suffering. Speaking to reporters in Beijinng yesterday, the bipartisan US delegation of congressional aides told stories and showed videotape of adult emaciated from hunger and infants too listless to respond and too weak to sit up unaided. Main street in North Korea appeared deserted, even in Pyongyang, the capital.
Conditions are especially desperate in the countryside, where floodshave ruined crops and lives.
The situation apparently is almost as grave as last year, when reports ofwidespread starvation in one of the world's most isolated, secretive nations began to surface. Since the famine hit in 1995, between 300,000 and 800,000 North Koreans have died each year from malnutrition and related diseases, the delegatioii members said, citing relief agencies and interviews with refugees. TheNorth Korean government denies such large tallies. The visiting team credited international relief agencies with staving offmore deaths, particularly among their target population of children under 7 years old. To ease the crisis, the United States has pledged 220,000tons of food through the United Nations World Food Program, with China offering 110,000 tons and the European Union an additional 95,000 tons.