North Korea: Deadly Rains Ruin Big Part Of Farmland

SEOUL, Aug. 15 -- North Korea on Wednesday detailed the devastation caused by some of the country's heaviest-ever rains, saying more than one-tenth of the impoverished country's farmland had been wiped out during peak growing season.

The North Korean government reported that hundreds of people were killed or missing in this month's floods, with as many as 300,000 left homeless.

Footage from Associated Press Television News showed citizens working to rebuild roads, clear debris and shore up sandbags along rivers in flood-affected areas outside Pyongyang, the capital. Video images also showed a farmhouse that appeared to have been swept down a hillside by the rain.

If the government's numbers on agricultural damage are confirmed, the destruction would be about one-quarter of that suffered in massive flooding in 1995. That disaster, coupled with outdated farming methods and the loss of the country's Soviet Union benefactor, sparked a famine that is estimated to have killed as many as 2 million people.

The vivid portrait of damage, in reports from the North's state-run media, appeared to be a cry for help from a desperate government that maintains strict secrecy of its internal affairs. But the North has previously exaggerated the extent of disasters to obtain aid and to cover up ineptitude in providing for its people in a centrally controlled economy.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday that downpours along areas of the Taedong River were the "largest ever in the history" of measurements taken by the country's weather agency.

An average of 20.6 inches of rain fell across the country from Aug. 7 through last Saturday, 2.1 inches more than downpours in August 1967, KCNA said.

The recent rains have submerged, buried or washed away more than 11 percent of rice and corn fields in the country, KCNA reported, citing Agriculture Ministry official Ri Jae Hyon. "It is hard to expect a high grain output owing to the uninterrupted rainstorms at the most important time for the growth of crops," KCNA said.

The U.N. World Food Program estimated that the amount of damage the North Koreans reported to their fields would result in losses of about 450,000 tons of crops -- adding to the 1 million ton annual shortage that the country already faces.

The amount is less than the 2 million tons that the North said was lost in the 1995 floods at the start of the famine, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. agency. "Nonetheless, this would be an extremely serious reduction in the amount of the harvest," he said.

The North is especially vulnerable to the annual heavy summer rains that soak the Korean Peninsula because of a vicious cycle in which people strip hillsides of natural vegetation to create more arable land to grow food, increasing flood risks.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill said the U.S. government was considering how it could help the North Koreans.

The disaster reports precede a planned summit this month between leaders of the two Koreas. South Korea's government has been criticized by opponents at home and abroad for having given unconditional aid to the North during an international standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.

Aid was already expected to be a key topic at the summit. Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the latest disaster gives Seoul justification to expand assistance to its neighbor.