N Korea floods 'kill hundreds'

by Tom van B | August 14, 2007 at 02:24 am

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Just picked this up on the radio at 2200 NZ time. The image of flooded street on this page is courtesy of Aljazeera Net.

NEWS ASIA-PACIFIC

State television showed pictures of flooded streets in the capital, Pyongyang.

Hundreds of people are dead or missing in North Korea following a week of torrential rains which have destroyed thousands of homes and damaged roads and railway tracks, state media says.

At least 30,000 homes, more than 540 bridges and sections of railway were destroyed in the rain and floods, the Korean Central News Agency said on Tuesday.

In a rare admission of suffering from the normally secretive country, it said heavy downpours since last week had caused "huge human and material damage".

Last year monsoons rains swept through much of the impoverished nation, killing hundreds of people.

Deforestation in the countryside has been blamed for the worsening floods.

'Long-term concern'

Experts believe that deforestation has made seasonal flooding in North Korea worse.

Farmers have extended arable land into hills and forests in order to
grow more food, removing the foliage that prevents erosion and
landslides.

North Korea does not produce enough food to feed its population and is reliant on foreign food aid.

Mr Dunford said that the floods could constitute an extensive disaster for North Korea.

"This is something that will evolve throughout the rest of the
growing season, determining exactly how much of the crop and the
harvest has been lost," he told the BBC.

"But certainly North Korea is a food insecure country, it produces
less food than required, so to lose any of the harvest will be a
long-term concern for the North Korean authorities and for the World
Food Programme."

About two million people are thought to have died from famine in the mid-1990s in North Korea.

[q
url="http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=189381&s=&i=&t=Hundreds_dead,_missing_in_NKorea_floods:_report"]"The
material damage so far is estimated to be very big. This unceasing
heavy rain destroyed the nation's major railways, roads and bridges,
suspended power supply and cut off the communications network," KCNA
said.

The capital Pyongyang and the neighbouring provinces of South
Hwanghae province southwest of Pyongyang and South Phyongan north of
the capital were also badly affected, it said.

In a separate dispatch, KCNA said many parts of the country received
between 30 and 67 centimetres (about one to two feet) of rain between
August 7 and 12.

"As a result, the farmland in those areas was inundated, washed away
and buried under silt and dwelling houses, public buildings, production
establishments and other objects were completely or partly destroyed,"
the agency said.

Experts say decades of reckless deforestation have stripped North
Korea of tree cover that provides natural protection from flooding.

Energy-starved residents have used every scrap of wood from the
countryside to cook food or heat homes through the bitter winters,
leaving large areas of the country vulnerable to flooding and
landslides.

Officials have worsened the problem by encouraging residents to
expand farmland into the hillsides in a bid to grow more food.[/q]

Relieve slowly starting up:

[q
url="http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-14-voa59.cfm"]Officials at
the U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday that Pyongyang has already
made a preliminary request for aid. Officials said the agency will send
a team to North Korea to assess the damage.

In addition to the U.N., South Korea's Unification Ministry said
Tuesday it is exploring ways to help the north. A U.S. State Department
spokesman said Washington is also looking for ways to provide
humanitarian aid.

North Korea's southern and eastern provinces of Kangwon, North
Hwanghae and South Hamyong have suffered some of the worst damage.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is monitoring the situation.[/q]

Tom van B - good stuff.

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