The debate about how many people have died in the North Korea famine took a new turn yesterday when a government-sponsored research unit in South Korea claimed that up to 800,000 may have died each year for the past two to three years in the reclusive Stalinist country.
This would put the deaths from starvation and related diseases in North Korea in three years at between two and three million, a toll disputed by Western aid agencies and furiously denied by the government in Pyongyang.
The South Korea Institute for National Unification said it based its conclusions partly on recent defectors from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "A former North Korean representative to the United Nations who defected to South Korea in 1998 said he had heard from the North's UN ambassador, Mr Kim Hong-lim, that two to three million had died of starvation," it said in a white paper.
Last week South Korea's intelligence agency claimed to have information about a classified report by Pyongyang's Public Security Ministry which showed that the North's population had plunged over the past four years, falling to 22 million today from 25 million in 1995, mainly because of starvation and disease.
The North Koreans had reportedly conducted a census in preparation for elections for the 10th Supreme People's Assembly to be held soon.
A spokesman for the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee of North Korea described the allegations as "a whopping lie". It said the last population census in the DPRK was carried out by the Central Statistics Bureau in 1993 in co-operation with the United Nations population fund.
"The census showed that in 1993 the population of the DPRK was 21,213,000, or a 1.5 per cent natural increase in population. Taking into account this rate of natural increase in population, the population of the DPRK will reach as many as 23 million in the year 2000."
Several international aid agencies have dismissed earlier claims of two to three million deaths due to floods and drought and the near-collapse of the North Korean infrastructure, but acknowledge a grave situation exists. Some 62 per cent of North Korean children are severely malnourished and have stunted growth, according to the World Food Programme.
The South Korean Institute also claimed that as many as 200,000 North Koreans had fled to Russia and China. Western correspondents who recently visited the border area on the Chinese side reported that Chinese police had stepped up security measures to stem the flow of refugees.
The situation may be eased in the next two months under a deal whereby 100,000 tonnes of food grain would go directly from the US to North Korea if Pyongyang allows US inspectors to visit a suspected nuclear weapons facility in Kumchang-ri.
Despite the food shortages, North Korea is promoting a deluxe restaurant for visitors to Pyongyang. Shaped like a large sightseeing boat, Chongryu restaurant specialises in national dishes, including a hotpot meal called sinsollo, the official Korean Central News Agency said. The dish is made from more than 20 ingredients including beef, pheasant, egg, abalone, sea cucumber, mushrooms, bracken and over 10 kinds of spices.
President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea said yesterday that his government has been preparing to hold a summit meeting with the North Korean leader. "We, if North Korea wants, are preparing to aggressively respond to any type of talks with North Korea, including a summit," Mr Kim said on the Korean Broadcasting System television. He did not exclude a possibility of a summit meeting with the North. North Korea had also shown interest in holding summit talks with the South, he said. Mr Kim Dae-jung also said the government would allow civil organisations to send aid shipments of fertiliser in small quantities to the North.
South and North Korea remain technically at war after their 195053 war ended in a ceasefire and their first-ever summit, set for 1994, was cancelled because of the death of North Korea's then leader Kim Il-sung.