SOUTH KOREA: August 15, 2007


SEOUL - North Korea is seeking foreign help after massive flooding left hundreds dead or missing and swept away many buildings, a UN aid agency spokesman said on Tuesday.


North Korea, which has struggled with chronic food shortages for years, said in a report early Tuesday that floodwaters caused "tens of thousands of hectares of farmland (to be) inundated, buried under silt and washed away."

Paul Risley, Asia spokesman with the UN World Food Program (WFP), said: "If the figures are borne out by our own assessment, then we are very concerned that this is a significant emergency crisis.

"It is still very early in this process but we have received a preliminary request from North Korean authorities, asking for our assistance," Risley said by telephone from Bangkok.

He said a UN agency assessment team left the capital, Pyongyang, on Tuesday, headed for flood-hit areas of the secretive communist state.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, promised at a meeting with North Korean Ambassador Pak Gil Yon that the world body would do all it could to help.

"I instructed UN teams ... in Pyongyang as well as in Bangkok to first of all assess the damage," he told reporters.

"I assured (Pak) that the United Nations will be prepared to render whatever possible humanitarian assistance and help (the North Korean) government and people to overcome this difficulty, and he appreciated the offer."

Later Tuesday, North Korea's official KCNA news agency said coal mining pits, power lines and substations had also been inundated or damaged.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he would ask Washington to see what help could be offered.

"I asked if we could get some more information on it to see precisely what the situation is and to see what the appropriateness of assistance might be," he said in Beijing.

"We'll certainly be looking at it very seriously," Hill told reporters.

Some 63,300 families had been left homeless and nearly 6,000 Red Cross volunteers were engaged in evacuation and relief, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The Red Cross rescue team in the capital city saved 14 people from swirling waters," it said.


TV IMAGES

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it expected damage to be worse than last year, when three big storms hit North Korea and a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported that more than 800 people were killed or went missing in the resulting floods.

A ministry official said the government was looking into possible flood aid for North Korea but had not received any request from Pyongyang.

The floods were not expected to affect a planned summit between the two Koreas on Aug. 28-30, he added.

In an unusual move, the state's official TV station broadcast images of the damage, showing rain-swollen rivers and pedestrians walking through waist-deep water in flooded Pyongyang streets. The broadcast was monitored in Seoul.

KCNA said at least 800 public buildings and more than 540 bridges had been washed away, while sections of railroad had been destroyed and thousands of homes ruined. It also reported that scores of coal pits were submerged.

More than 500 high voltage power towers collapsed, five electric power substations of large capacity were inundated, and more than 10 transformers and other facilities severely damaged, KCNA added.

North Korea's infrastructure outside of showcase projects in Pyongyang is mostly a shambles. North Korea has few funds for building and still uses power and rail lines built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

The flooding has hit most of the southern half of North Korea and includes the capital and some of its most productive agricultural regions. More rain is forecast for those areas over the next few days.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations)


Story by Jon Herskovitz


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE