FAMINE-THREATENED North Koreans are living on a basic ration of 100 gms per day (just under 4 oz) and food is being distributed under a system similar to one used in wartime, a North Korean diplomat was quoted as saying.
Mr Ri Sangyu, a counsellor in the Office for the Protection of North Korean Interests in Berlin, was quoted in Saturday's edition of the Neues Deutschland daily as saying North Korea had suffered "enormous" economic and food shortages.
But he said the situation was not as bad as it was being depicted in the Western press.
"The ration is 100 gms per person per day until the next harvest. But there are supplements for people undertaking heavy physical work. We have built up the sort of distribution system like the one we knew during wartime," he said.
He said all citizens were registered at distribution points, which provided them with rations according to the number of people in their household.
Mr Ri also accused "right-wing conservative American forces, Japanese reactionaries and South Korean puppets" of spreading lies about the situation in North Korea.
"The Western media are reporting hundreds of deaths from hunger. This is not correct. The situation is difficult but not as it is being portrayed by Western media," he said.
"The losses in terms of the economy and in terms of food are enormous but the North Korean people are full of optimism and confidence in the future."
North Korea's Red Cross yesterday confirmed an agreement under which its South Korean counterpart would supply 50,000 tonnes of food aid to the North by the end of July.
In an interview with the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang's Red Cross spokesman called the accord signed on Monday in Beijing a humanitarian act of "mutual help".
"The spokesman expressed the belief that the South Korean Red Cross will be sincere in implementing what was agreed upon," KCNA said.
Under the deal, the first since 1985 between the Red Cross societies of the two hostile ends of the Korean peninsula, South Korea will supply 50,000 tonnes of food in its first instalment of direct Red Cross aid to the Stalinist North, which is struggling to ward off a looming famine.
Most of the aid would consist of corn, which would be transported by land routes other than the Korean War truce village of Panmunjom and via North Korean ports, South Korean Red Cross officials said.
. North Korea is hiding a large amount of plutonium, but evidence may be slipping away, the head of a United Nations nuclear watchdog said yesterday. Mr Hans Blix stressed that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was not asserting that the Stalinist state had a nuclear device.
Widespread fears that Pyongyang possessed an atomic bomb were stoked last month when a top North Korean defector warned that his country could turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" and scorch Japan in a nuclear attack.