Painting a picture of a population in distress, the reporter saw people combing through the grass looking for edible weeds. “Sprawled on the lawn outside a bathhouse, poorly dressed people lie on the grass, either with no better place to go or no energy to do so at 10 a.m. on a weekday,” it said.

Aid agencies are quoted as saying the level of hunger is not at the point it was in the 1990s, but several children were suffering from kwashiorkor, or hunger belly, the swollen abdomen and other symptoms associated with extreme malnutrition. “Hospitals complained to aid workers of rising infant mortality and declining birth weight,” the daily said. “The number of patients with digestive disorders caused largely by poor nutrition rose 20 percent to 40 percent.”

A recent survey of 375 North Korean households by the World Food Programme showed that more than 70 percent fill the shortage with weeds collected from fields. Most adults have started skipping lunch, reducing their diet to two meals a day, according to another survey.

The food shortage is not from a lack of effort so much as from a dearth of proper equipment and fertilizer, the daily said. A major problem is North Korea's souring relationship with Seoul, which is withholding a planned shipment of 300,000 tons of fertilizer. The price of fertilizer on the private market has skyrocketed because China closed many of its production facilities in the northwest to clear the air for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In addition, China has enacted heavy export taxes on fertilizer and grain, the daily added.

(englishnews@chosun.com )