North Korea Faces Hunger Again

North Korea never finds it easy to feed its citizens. The land is mountainous, rocky, and hard to till. The country's economic system is in shambles. Farm equipment and electricity needed for processing food are in short supply.

The current world food crisis is making matters worse. With the prices of rice and other grains soaring, North Korea's traditional food donors, China and South Korea, are reluctant to provide large amounts of food aid to the chronically food-insecure nation.

The final blow to North Korea's food-production capacity: the country has suffered two years of poor harvests due to torrential rains and flooding.

As a result, according to the World Food Program, 23 million North Koreans have a severely deficient diet, and 6.5 million are at risk of starvation.

Somewhat surprisingly, the U.S. is coming to the rescue of this charter member of the so-called "Axis of Evil."

Today, a U.S. ship docked at Nampo, on the coast near Pyongyang, with 38,000 tons of wheat onboard. It's the first shipment of a total of 500,000 tons pledged; the U.S. government is supplying 400,000, with the remaining 100,000 tons coming from non-governmental organizations.

The U.S. government claims that this aid is unrelated to last week's nuclear agreement. It's not a bribe; the timing is just a coincidence!

Photo of North Korean orphans eating World Food Program-supplied aid. Getty Images.