South Korean expert says grain shortfall is set to reach 800,000 tonnes this year. This leaves many people with nothing to eat. Political succession in Pyongyang has made matters worse.

Seoul (AsiaNews) – The tragedy of the people of North Korea is a never-ending story. A South Korean expert warns that food shortages will get worse this year. Rising international food prices are one factor, international sanctions are another, not to mention a terribly rigid winter.

Kwon Tae-jin, who teaches at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, expects this year's grain harvest to be about four million tonnes, 100,000 tons less than last year. Shrinking international aid, higher global prices, an intensely cold winter that has gripped the peninsula, and an outbreak of of foot-and-mouth disease, which decimated herds, are the main factors.

The North needs 5.5 million tonnes of grain a year to feed its 24 million people, Kwon said. Assuming it can import as much grain and receive as much international food aid as it did last year, the shortfall would still be around 800,000 tonnes.

Officials from the UN's World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation arrived in February in North Korea, one of the most isolated nations in the world, to assess the situation. They confirmed the food shortfall.

Previously, sources had already told AsiaNews about the worsening food situation, with people in some cases driven by hunger to eat dirt.

The regime’s succession saga (with dictator Kim Jong-il’s his third son, Kim Jong-un, poised to take over) was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The heir in fact was behind two recent military attacks against South Korea, with caused outrage in Seoul and Washington.

In order to secure the backing of the military, he has also promised to increase their share of food supplies above what his father had already allocated.

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