Famine

SOUTH Korea has accepted a North Korean proposal that the two countries hold military talks despite continuing tensions on the divided peninsula. Ties between the two countries, which are still technically at war, have soured since South Korea's pro-US conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, took office in February with a pledge to get tough with North Korea.In protest, North Korea suspended reconciliation talks and threatened to cut any remaining relations if Seoul continues a policy of "reckless confrontation".

The meeting comes against a backdrop of famine in the North. The country is facing its worst food crisis in a decade, with a large shortfall expected this year, according to a report released this week by the United Nations.

The number of children suffering from diarrhoea has increased sharply and millions of people in the country are facing "severe deprivations" not seen since the mid-1990s, the report said, with the shortfall of food expected to reach more than one and a half million tonnes.

While the military and the elite are not suffering, more than three-quarters of households have reduced their food consumption and more than half are eating only two meals per day, the report said.

"Sadly, even though the harvest was getting better, we have had devastating floods in 2006 and 2007," said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the author of the report. "Over the past year we have had very worrying information of a very chronic food shortage."

Muntarbhorn, a Thai law professor who serves as the special reporter for human rights in North Korea, has not been allowed to enter the country.

Child malnutrition and illnesses have been rising, with nearly twice as many children suffering from diarrhoea than the number recorded in the last UN nutritional survey conducted in 2004, the report said. Two-thirds of the country's 23 million people have a poor diet.

The World Food Programme, which started a special program to reach 1.9 million North Koreans in 2006, is now expanding it in the hopes of helping 6.5 million people, said Muntarbhorn.

The government has been more cooperative with the programme, he said, allowing the agency to monitor the distribution of aid and to conduct random checks.

Muntarbhorn said that continuing talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear weapons programme excluded human rights issues, but they should be used to provide some leverage for improving the human rights situation.

"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Mat 24:7