A Kyodo News correspondent, who recently visited the secretive country, said that North Korea was hit by a drought in the spring that led to the most severe water shortage in 1,000 years.

On top of that, heavy rains flooded the isolated country in the summer, his report said. International agencies such as the World Food Programme have forecast North Korea's grain harvest will be the worst ever this year.

"There was a continued drought during the rice planting season and the seedlings withered," Cha Du-Hyok, chief manager of the Takan cooperative farm, more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) north of Pyongyang, told Kyodo.

"We had to plant rice three times," he said. "Yet we did not finish one-third of the paddies planned for rice planting."

Members of the farm planted soybeans on ridges that divide paddies, the report said. They also planted millet and corn in small vacant areas in a desperate effort to use every bit of idle land to increase food production. However the corn appeared to be blighted, it said.

"The rice output is on the decline," Cha was quoted as saying. "There were seven to eight tonnes of rice per hectare of paddies 10 years ago. Production was down to one to two tonnes in recent years with the output totaling only 500 kilograms in the worst time."

In 2002, North Korea will mark the 60th birthday of supreme leader Kim Jong Il on February 16 and the 90th anniversary of his late father Kim Il Sung's birth on April 15.

The senior Kim died in 1994 at the age of 82 after ruling the country with his own brand of communism since the end of World War II. He left perennial food problems unresolved.

Under North Korean rationing, workers received 700 grams of grain per day, the report said.

However, it was reported that the amount has been cut in the past few years.

The country recently started raising tropical catfish as a source of protein, Kyodo said, but the fish is not popular among Pyongyang residents, who consider it bland.

"My father died of an illness several years ago," a Pyongyang resident was quoted as saying. "Undoubtedly, he grew weak because he had little to eat. The daily ration at that time was only 100 grams. It's a little better today."

But there seems to be a sort of no-win situation on the farm.

"We need pumps to get water, but the pumps need electricity and we don't have electric power," Cha said.

sps/mtp AFP

Copyright (c) 2001 Agence France-Presse
Received by NewsEdge Insight: 10/01/2001 08:19:23

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