The London Times
Jennifer Veale in Seoul

February 19, 1999

Between two and three million North Koreans have died of starvation or fled to neighbouring China and Russia since 1995 when chronic food shortages began, according to a secret survey said to have been conducted in the Communist country.

South Korea's intelligence agency said that a classified report by Pyongyang's Public Security Ministry showed that the North's population had plunged more than 500,000 a year over the past four years - due mainly to starvation and disease, but also to defection.

The National Intelligence Service did not reveal how it came by the information.

While the death toll is unknown, South Korean officials believe that the Stalinist nation's population has plunged to 22 million from 24 million in 1994.

Last year a visiting delegation from the United States Congress reported that about two million North Koreans were believed to have died from malnutrition and disease since 1995.

"The North's population is expected to continue to decrease unless it eases its severe food shortages,'' an intelligence official was quoted as saying. The Public Security Ministry reportedly conducted the census ahead of the polls to elect candidates to the tenth Supreme People's Assembly - North Korea's parliament.

The North's food shortages began in 1994, when massive floods swept the country, destroying crops and huge tracts of arable land.

Drought in successive years and obsolete farming techniques compounded the famine. International relief agencies have responded over the past five years with more than £625 million in food aid. But many North Koreans have fled to China and Russia looking for food and a trade in North Korean refugees has sprung up along the country's border with China.

The North is pressing for more food aid from the United States in return for access to an underground site which Washington suspects is a nuclear facility in breach of a 1994 anti-nuclear pact.

Under the deal, North Korea froze its nuclear programme in return for modern light-water reactors and economic aid from the United States and its allies. A Seoul newspaper reported yesterday that agreement between Pyongyang and Washington was expected by early next month on a deal to swap food aid and an easing of sanctions for access to the disputed site. The newspaper said the deal would also cover Pyongyang's contentious missile programme.

Another report said that Seoul was considering providing the North with 30,000 tonnes of fertiliser next month before the spring planting season.

South Korea recently gave the go-ahead for private citizens to make aid donations to the North rather than go through the Red Cross.