U.S. humanitarian agency USAID has shipped more than 55,000 pounds of food to feed nearly 900,000 North Koreans suffering from severe food shortages.
Five humanitarian agencies, including three Christian aid groups, will be distributing the assistance once it reaches North Korea late next month.
“With North Korea’s people in a precarious situation facing low food stocks and the onset of a harsh winter, our primary concern is the country’s most vulnerable groups, children and mothers especially,” said George Ward, senior vice president of international programs for World Vision in the United States. “We are moving urgently to ensure this assistance reaches those in most need at a critical time.”
World Vision and Mercy Corps are co-leading distributions that will be conducted in two North Korean provinces. Samaritan’s Purse, Christian Friends of Korea, and Global Resource Services are partner agencies.
The food shortage in North Korea is due to the combination several factors including severe flooding this year that devastated harvests, China’s erection of barriers to food exports, and the global skyrocketing of prices for staples such as rice and maize.
Food shortage and famine have been long and deeply-rooted in the history of North Korea. In the 1990s, the reclusive country suffered a severe famine lasting several years that was estimated to have killed as many as two million people.
And in 2006, a World Food Program envoy said 37 percent of children under the age of six in North Korea were chronically malnourished and one-third of North Korean women were anemic and malnourished.
The U.S. food shipment this past week will focus on helping North Korea’s most vulnerable people –children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and the elderly – who will receive daily rations from the shipment of bulk corn and soy.
Once the shipment arrives, the food will be rationed to recipients through public distribution centers, orphanages, school, hospitals and nurseries in Chagang and North Pyongan Provinces.
The shipment marks the fourth that the U.S. government has sent to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea this year. It also marks the first U.S. food shipment that will be entirely allotted for the NGO partnership to dispense.
North Korea was recently removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for the rogue regime’s vow to continue its denuclearization process and allow international nuclear inspections.
North Korea had been on the blacklist since 1988.
RSS
Jesus taught that if we help our enemies then they will be less the enemy, and besides with groups like Samaritan's Purse and World Vision at the forefront then we can feel confident all with occur as God intends.
this all fine and dandy, but the fact is that the u.s. would let it's own people starve to feed everyone else! where is the help for the citizens here?!? I am all for missions and evangelizing but we are supposed to take care of the house we live in first! everything s shipped elsewhere! it's just sad, that's all.................
dflannery:
The article may be poorly written. According to humanitarian agencies I looked at here are the facts they report:
This is actually the fourth shipment and is 25,060 metric tons. The World Food Program is also receiving a total of 400,000 metric tons of assistance from the U.S. All this to a country the U.S. and U.N. are still technically at war with.....
That's 55 pounds per 900 persons (or less than 1 ounce each) according to the CP headline. So is the U.S.A. REALLY feeding 900,000 people or is that just a sensational self congratulating exaggeration by a U.S. publication.
After the Korean war, evangelization began to start in
a greater force in South Korea, and now S. Korea is
emerging as a leader in sending missionaries to other
countries. God is going to open wide doors for the gospel of kingdom in North Korea. At first their physical hunger must be met with, shortly their spiritual
hunger has to be fulfilled. All these signs are the
beginning of a great spiritual awakening in Asia, and
the rest of the whole world.