Crisis Looming In North Korea

July 3, 2005, 12:00AM

North Korea appears on the brink of famine

Planting season takes on urgency as fears of a food shortage grow
By BARBARA DEMICK
Los Angeles Times

HAEGUMGANG, NORTH KOREA - From the first light of morning, soldiers squat in the fields, many of them stripped down to their T-shirts. They are joined by women with babies strapped to their backs, children who look like they ought to be in school and senior citizens with white kerchiefs wrapped around their heads to protect them from the sun.

It is the height of the planting season in North Korea, and the regime has mobilized millions of people to make the most of the moment. Even office workers from the city are spending their weekends in the countryside planting rice and other crops.

The mass mobilization has been the custom every year in North Korea for decades — it is usually as much a way of inculcating people with collectivist values as getting out the crops.

But this year, it is larger than in the past and has taken on particular urgency as fears grow that North Korea could be facing a famine as severe as the one that cost the lives of about 2 million people in the mid-1990s.

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