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Groups seek to help flooded N. Korea

Parts of the country got a year's worth of rain in a week, state media say.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 17, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's neighbors and international aid agencies sought Thursday to help the impoverished country cope with floods that have decimated large swaths of farmland, endangering citizens already struggling with food shortages.

The North Korean government granted the World Food Program permission to send four emergency teams today to stricken areas, providing a wider independent assessment of the damage.

A senior U.N. official in New York said 58,000 homes had been destroyed along with nearly 222,400 acres of farmland, leaving 300,000 people homeless. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Margareta Wahlstrom, deputy emergency relief coordinator, said 83 people were dead and about 60 missing.

The U.N. said its relief officials in the region reported floodwaters had wrecked more than 800 public buildings, 540 bridges, 70 stretches of railway and more than 500 electricity towers. More than 30 water reservoirs and 450 agricultural structures were damaged, it said.

Up to 6.5 feet of water covered some streets in Pyongyang, knocking out electricity and communication networks and leaving islets in the Taedong River running through the city "buried under silt beyond recognition," the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

The rain in some parts of the country from seven days of storms was almost as much as is usually recorded in a whole year, KCNA said.

The series of unusually detailed official reports on the disaster were viewed as a public cry for help from the government, which usually is extremely reluctant to reveal signs of internal trouble to the outside world.

The weather in affected areas cleared somewhat Thursday, with the previous heavy downpours turning to sporadic showers, said spokesman Chang Hyun Sik of the Korea Meteorological Association in South Korea.

[Last modified August 16, 2007, 22:41:23]