World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

South Korea says UN officials believe North Korea needs massive international food aid, but Seoul has no immediate plans to resume food shipments. The Unification Ministry says visiting World Food Program officials briefed South Korea on Wednesday about their recent assessment of the North's food situation.

Visiting UN food agency officials on Wednesday stressed the need for major food aid for North Korea, while a cautious South Korea called for transparent distribution of any assistance. The seven World Food Programme delegates led by Terri Toyota, director of government donor relations, met senior officials of the South's unification ministry which handles cross-border affairs.

A United Nations food agency team arrived in South Korea Monday to brief officials about North Korea's food situation, following a UN report that a quarter of its population urgently needs aid. The four World Food Programme (WFP) delegates led by Terri Toyota, the director of government donor relations, will meet senior foreign and unification ministry officials on Wednesday, ministry spokesmen said.

North Korea's government food distribution system will run dry in May and put one-quarter of the country's 24 million residents at risk of starvation, the U.N. World Food Program said in an assessment that may influence whether the U.S. and other countries provide assistance to the country. (..) "Vulnerable members of society are currently facing increasing shocks to their daily coping strategies, leaving them on a knife edge," the WFP said in a statement and report sent to diplomats in donor countries Thursday.

A UN aid programme that is supposed to provide food supplements to 2m children and pregnant women in North Korea is reaching less than half the target population and is likely to close within months because western funding has dried up. Kenro Oshidari, the UN World Food Programme’s Asia regional director, said the essential nutritional supplements programme was 80 per cent unfunded because of a dispute over North Korean restrictions on western monitoring of how the aid was used.

One of the few aid agencies working in North Korea says it may be forced to suspend operations in the destitute country if Pyongyang's surprise attack on a South Korean island deters donors as some experts fear. (..) WFP's executive director Josette Sheeran, who visited North Korea this month, said the agency was worried about the lack of funding. "I saw a lot of children already losing the battle against malnutrition," she said after her trip. "Their bodies and minds are stunted and so we really feel the need there."

A majority of North Korea’s population will face food shortages in the coming year unless it receives international assistance, two United Nations agencies have warned. In its report released on Tuesday in Rome, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program urged that food aid to be targeted to 5 million North Koreans most in need, including children, the disabled, pregnant women and the elderly.

A joint report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday warned that about five million people living in North Korea will continue to face food shortages despite a relatively good harvest and a slight increase in food supply. The report follows a visit of the joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission which visited North Korea in September. The mission found that the country faces a cereal import requirement for the 2010/11 marketing year of an estimated 867,000 tonnes.

The South Korean government says that more than 10,000 North Koreans reached the South during the past three years. (..) Aid officials say sanctions on Pyongyang, because of its nuclear program, have made donor nations reluctant to provide aid. China, South Korea and the U.N's World Food Program are the primary sources of food assistance for North Korea.

The World Food Programme's executive director has visited North Korea, a country blighted by undernourishment, for the body's first top-level meeting with North Korean officials in ten years. Josette Sheeran, the World Food Programme's (WFP) executive director, was greeted by Pak Kil Yon, the North Korean vice-foreign minister, in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Wednesday state media reported.