Yet half a block away, elderly women hunt through discarded cabbage leaves before the city awakes. It's the only garbage I see. At Lutheran World Relief we direct our concern toward the hinterland. But an aid worker says she also finds pockets of malnutrition and related disease under Pyongyang's fine exterior. For many North Koreans the nights are dark.
Temperatures can fall like North Dakota's.
Having enough to eat is a struggle, though generally easier now than last summer, thanks in part to outside aid. Amid their third hard winter in a row, many can look forward to little more than another hungry spring. The four-agency delegation is Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish. Together the churches we represent claim half the people in America. American interfaith compassion in Pyongyang is new.