Krisher participates in rice distribution in Huichon.

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Pyongyang 3/6/96 (Report #1)

Joseph and I left Tokyo on March 3 and spent two nights in Beijing. The morning of March 4 we drove to the DPRK Embassy where our visas were waiting for us and we received our visa certificates, inserted into our passports, on the spot. The visas were gratis.

We then drove to the residence of King Sihanouk, who has been undergoing medical treatment in Beijing, and spent three and a half hours with him, which turned into an interesting and provocative interview that I filed to my newspaper, The Cambodia Daily.

On March 5th we boarded flt JS152 of Koryo Airlines at 12:30 p.m. and landed at Pyongyang airport about two hours later. On the same flight there was a team from ABC-TV, a Korean-American Protestant minister from New York, a top-level delegation from Nigeria and the charge d'affaires from Romania and Sweden, as well as the trade representative from Belorussia. On routes like these (there are only flights a week into Pyongyang from China, and just a couple more from other cities), one makes friends easily. Only the ABC group was quite secretive. I tried to start a conversation to inform and interest them in our rice donation project with the view of possible coverage, but they denied they were Americans and did not want to converse so I did not pursue the conversation.

At the airport we were met by our guides, Mr. Li, from the Foreign Ministry, and Mr. Kim, formerly a researcher from the Peace and Disarmament Committe, who is on loan to the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee. We drove back to the hotel in two black Mercedes Benz sedans and discussed our schedule which we agreed on as follows:

March 5 (Tuesday)
15.00 Arrived at Pyongyang Airport
17.00 Arrived at the Koryo Hotel
18.00 Discussion of schedule at the hotel

(We later dined together at the National Restaurant, a charming folklore restaurant, serving Bulgogi, near our hotel).

March 6 (Wednesday)
9.30 Discussion with the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee members on presentation of rice, at the hotel
14.00 Meeting with Deputy President of Korea Cereals Export and Import Corp. at the hotel 18.30 Dinner with guides at the hotel

March 7 (Thursday)
9.30 Visiting Mangyongade, birthplace of the great leader Comrade KIM IL SUNG
10.00 Visit to the Art Studio
14.30 Sightseeing Dangung tomb
17.00 Enjoying acrobatic performance

March 8 (Friday)
9.30 Receiving rice at Nampo port
14.00 Presentation of rice in Unpa County of North Hwanghae Province

March 9 (Saturday)
9.30 Receiving rice at Nampo port
14.30 Presentation of rice in Anju County of South Hwangage Province

March 10 (Sunday)
9.30 Receiving rice at Nampo port
14.00 Presentation of rice at Huichon County of Chagang Province
19.00 Dinner with Guides at the hotel (sleeping in Huichon planned)

March 11 (Monday)
10.00 Arrival in Pyongyang
10.30 Meeting
In the afternoon, departure preparation

March 12 (Tuesday)
10.00 Departure by airplane

.....

Joseph and I met with Mr. Li Jong Hua, Representative of the Section of the Comprehensive Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee, whom we also met on our last visit, to discuss our distribution plans and future collections and visits. I confirmed with Mr. Li that previous announcements by the DPRK government regarding a halt to accepting foreign donations to the flood victims was aimed at donors who intended to use such donations for political purposes, who attached conditions, or provided unwanted materials. It was not aimed at groups such as ours, the Internet Appeal for North Korean Flood Victims or other organizations whose donations were "sincere" and purely humanitarian.

Mr. Li also stated that the government was fully capable now of providing the victims with ample clothing, blankets and shoes and most of the 500,000 victims were already living in new homes, but rice supplies remained short and would now be the only welcome donation from overseas.

Mr. Li suggested (1) direct cash contributions to his organization which could purchase rice most economically or (2) shipments of rice to one of the North Korean ports where donors could consign it to the Flood Rehabilitation Committee or (3) in some cases, like us, receive the shipments at the port, consigned to us, and then deliver them directly to the villagess in the flood-affectedd areas were possible options.

We aim to begining doing this from Thursday (March 8) and will report on it on this page.

He confirmed there was a severe food shortage but dismissed reports of the existence of a famine and questioned whether such comments, depicting starvation and severe malnutrition among children, made by some foreign officials were intended to gain sympathy or to undermine an image of stability in his country. He stressed his government took the appropriate procedures to prevent such conditions and its citizens received fair and equal distribution of available rice.

He questioned whether persons aiming to propagate a picture of a famined nation were not trying to use the food situation to attack the nation's dignity. "We regard our dignity as our life," he declared. "Do not touch our dignity using the food situation."

He added: "Even though we have called on the international community for assistance, the quantities we have received is not much and a number of pledges have not materialized or have been greatly delayed." Therefore, he concluded "such assistance was not welcome and the government would not issue a new appeal." They would work with existsing organizations which have been dependable and sincerely humanitarian.

He also stressed that his committee could not handle all the potential donors which have contacted the committee, wishing to visit North Korea with uncertain commitments.

It was clear, however, from our conversation that aid was not being unilaterally rejected. Pure, humanitarian aid and aid that is needed, rice or cash which can buy rice, not tied to political motivies or other conditions that challenged North Korea's dignity or 'juche' (philosophy of 'self-reliance') was welcome.

In this respect we were encouraged to continue our Internet campaign and I in turn pledged I would spare no effort to aim at larger contributions for our next planned visit in May or June when the food shortage may become more severe.

Finally, I raised the question which is on the mind of many donors -- which is whether rice donations will reach the civilian population and not be distributed to the military.

Mr. Li was quite firm in his response:

"It is slanderous to imply that the donations to our flood victims have been distributed to the military," he stated. "Those donations will not be, cannot be and are not given to the military. They are all provided without exception to the civilian population."

He cited numerous international donors who had supervised their donations to civilian populations -- including French and Swedish donors. He questioned the motives of those who were spreading "such slanders" and suggested these were aimed at undermining donations.

[I had breakfast this morning with Kjeld J. Madsen, team leader of the UN's Department of Humitarian Affairs -- DHA -- who has been supervising donations of rice and stated he was fully satisfied the DPRK's government distribution system was efficient, thorough and reached the flood victims.]

After lunch, I met with Kim HaIl, Director of the Korea Cerelas Export & Import Corp. to discuss the shipment of 260 tons of rice we had ordered through Medmar, a Greek shipping firm, through Geneva and which was coming into Nampo port. We are to pick up the first part of this shipment on Thursday at Nampo and load it onto nine or ten trucks (we will pay for the gasoline and the Flood Committee will provide the trucks and drivers) and distribute it in Unpa County.

Watch this page for future reports

Pyongyang 3/8/96 (Report #2)

This morning we are off to Nampo port, about 40 minutes from Pyongyang with a number of trucks to pick up and load our first donations of rice. We are then scheduled to take them to Unpa where we will deliver them to the population there.

Yesterday we spent the day visiting the Mangyongdae (birthplace of the late President Kim Il Sung), visited the art studio and met artists who continue to paint in the traditional Korean style, potters continuing to produce celadon and Koryo-style vases and pots, a room of lady embroiderers. In the afternoon we visited the newly built tomb of King Dangun (sometimes spelled Tangun), the founder of the Korean nation more than 5,000 years ago, an impressive monument, and in the souvenir shop there purchased an elaborate book of artworks produced during the Li Dynasty. At 5 we went to see an acrobatic performance which was spectacular, particularly the trapeze act. In the audience was an European Christian group that was here to deliver rice donations. We also met with the group from ABC-TV and later dined with them at the Koryo Hotel. Charles Lustig, ABC News foreign editor; Ray Homer, the Tokyo bureau chief, along with Han S. Park, director and professor of political science at the Center for the Study of Global Issues, were here to discuss a news project with the authorities. On the plane I had approached Lustig and asked him if he was "American" and said: "no" so I did not talk with him further. But I discovered he was in fact Canadian so he was right and turned out to be very friendly. We had a pleasant dinner and exchange of views about our trips.

During the lunch hour I visited Trevor Page, head of the World Food Program operations here at his office (also private quarters) located on the sixth (walkup) floor of the Diplomatic Apartment complex. Mr. Page gave me an update chart of food donations which we will attempt to reproduce on this Home Page. The donations so far fall far short of the needs.

I will reproduce some of the Q & A with Mr. Page in a few days but the gist of our talk was the urgent need for food to prevent malnutrition, which he said was already occurring in some areas; that the monitoring of donated rice distributions by the WFP confirmed that all such donations were reaching the civilian populations, and that corn and wheat could be substituted for rice at lower cost and provided nearly the same nutritional value.

Mr. Page said the North Korean distribution system was very efficient and appeared to be fair and could be trusted. Far more than in other countries he had worked. He said he had asked a North Korean colonel who was flying to Hawaii to talk with the U.S. on MIA matters, and who spoke English, how he reacted to reports that the military were receiving abundant rice supplies at the expense of the civilian population. The colonel, Page said, had a convincing response. he told Page in effect: how could this happen when my mother, father, brothers and sisters are all civilians? Do you think we would allow our relatives to be without food? Page surmised that the military may have rice stored from the previous Korean harvest but foreign donations designated for the flood victims were not being diverted.

We were off to Unpa, though I see fresh snow outside my hotel window. I hope there is no new snow in the coming days.

Pyongyang 3/8/96 (Report #3)

The snow melted and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We learned th at our ship with the 260 tons of rice we ordered had not yet arrived and is du e to arrive tomorrow. So we borrowed 50 tons of rice from the Korea Cereals Ex port & Import Corporation against our shipment and hired five trucks (with Red Cross flags on them as normal trucks without such flags may not use the highw ay) which had a capacity of ten tons. We met these trucks, already loaded with 100 sacks each of 50 kilo of 35 percent broke rice. The sacks bore the label of a Singapore trading company. The trucks waited for us in front of the Grand Theater at 2:30 p.m.

Our two black Mercedes Benzes, Joseph in one car with Mr. Kim, and I i n the other with Mr. Li, led the convoy of trucks for about an hour's drive to Sariwon City (which is the provincial capital for North Hwanghae Province) where we met the head of the provincial government's foreign section at the lo cal hotel. We had stopped there once before last November when we made the clo thing donations there. The gentlemen greeted our guides and recognized Joseph and me and rushed over and said with apparent surprise and obvious joy: "Mr. B ernard Krisher" in one word. That was all I could understand but he went on in Korean and our guides explained how grateful he was for our previous visit an d how happy he was to see us again so soon and unexpectedly. We then drove an other twenty minutes to the rice warehouse of Unpa where we were greeted by th e same woman we had also met in November at the village of Sochang dong villag e. She was the vice chairman of the Unpa City Administrative Council. She also showed great joy at seeing us again. She had only been notified that some fo reigners were coming with rice donations but had not expected *us*.

The trucks then moved toward the warehouse and about 20 men had been m obilized to help unload the rice which they efficiently piled into neat stack s along the warehouse's walls as Joseph photographed and videotaped the operat ion. A woman with a notebook counted the sacks as they were piled up and each time 50 sacks had been unloaded she entered the figure into her notebook whic h Joseph also videotaped. I carried a few stacks myself and they were quite h eavy. Each sack weighed 50 kilo. There were 100 sacks on each truck, totallin g ten tons. So the total rice we delivered was 50 tons enough to feed 3,750 pe rsons for a month. I had noted one sack which appeared to be less full than th e rest but another sack already been placed on top of it. If sacks were short of rice it could be a claim that could be made against the shipper.

I asked whether they had a scale and a scale was brought out of the wa rehouse. I picked five sacks at random as they were unloaded and had them plac ed on the scale. Three sacks weighed exactly 50 kilo and two weighed more tha n 51 kilo, so I joked and cupped my hands that I had take back 1 kilo. Everyon e laughed.

I then picked some 20 kernels of rice that had fallen out of the sack s to the floor of one of the trucks and looked at them with the local people. They concurred that this appeared to be 35 percent broken rice. Some of the ke rnels were full size and about a third were smaller in size which confirms it was the type of rice we had ordered to be shipped.

I was satisfied that we donated 50 tons of 35 percent rice to the civi lian population in Unpa. There were enough witnesses at this unloading operati on to convince me the rice went to the people we had intended to receive it an d they would receive a fuller diet from this donation. I asked some questions and learned that the winter had not been too harsh, many houses had been re built but a number of farmers were still living in temporary housing and had e xperienced some cold days. A number of children had colds. The powdered milk w e had donated the last time was very welcome and was properly administered to infants and young children. The school that had been destroyed by the flood, w hich we saw on our last visit, was not yet rebuilt and the children were atte nding another school in a neighboring town. That school was now operating in t wo shifts. Our rice would be distributed to needy families. The current stora ge of rice enabled the local authorities to distribute 150 grams per person per meal or a total of 450 grams a day. Our distribution helped to assure the continuation of this ration.

After receiving many thanks and I in turn thanking the drivers and the team which lifted the heavy bags and stored them, we left and returned to Pyo ngyang where we go ready to go out for dinner with my old friend Ludo, a Belg ian, who has been in Pyongyang for eight years, operating a diamond polishing joint venture factory and his charming Vietnamese wife, who was a former forei gn student at Kim Il Sung University. We are also asking our guides, Mr. Li an d Mr. Kim, to join us at the Azalea restaurant, one of the best Korean style r estaurants in the capital. As we let our drivers go home early to see their fa milies (since this is also Women's Day) to prepare for tomorrow's trip to Anju , Ludo will pick us up in his mini-bus which he drives himself. Actually I fee l guilty to be eating so well while so many people here and elsewhere in the world survive on reduced rations.

Pyongyang 3/10/96 (Report #4)

It was another fine, clear day but very cold. Joseph and I with our two guides, Mr. Li and Mr. Kim Left the Koryo hotel at 8:30 and met five trucks carrying our rice in front of the Grand Theater. As our ship had not yet arrived, we borrowed another 50 tons from the Cereal Corporation. We drove along a beautiful and scenic highway for more than an hour north to the city of Anj u which had also been severely hit by floods. We led the convoy of trucks, eac h one carrying 10 tons but had to stop several times because the trucks were s topped by traffic police at checkpoints. Trucks are not permitted to use the h ighways and they had to show the special certificates which they had been issu ed for this purpose. Our car also had suffered a flat at one point but our dri ver very skillfully replaced it in a matter of minutes.

We arrived at Anju, an industrial city with a population of 220,000 at 11:30 and first went to rest at the Chong Chon Dong Hotel, situated atop a h ill overlooking a river and the city. This city has a broad six lane main stre et with flats lined up at each side. Mr. Li Sa Yong, vice chairman of the City 's administration division, who met us at the gate of the city, explained as w e drove to the hotel that this wide street had been flooded up to the second s tory of these buildings. We later walked to a mud embankment, aimed at preven ting such a flood and saw how it had been cracked and had fallen apart. It has since been reinforced again with sand bags.

We were also accompanied on this trip by Mrs. Nam Yong Ae, vice direct or of the cereal department of the Flood Rehabilitation Committee, who manages the cereal deliveries to the flood victims throughout the country. She rode i n one of the trucks to assure they would not lose us.

After assembling at the hotel we drove to the rice storehouse with our trucks. There, some 20 workers stood ready to unload the rice and pile the sa cks up into neat piles. I again requested a scale and we weighed the sacks. Th is time six out of eight sample sacks weighed 300 to 500 grams less than the f ull 50 kg.

The sacks had the words "Singapore" written on them, also "Suno Chian Lee, Atuc Fair Price." I was perturbed at this discrepancy and asked Mrs. Nam. She confirmed that they frequently experienced such shortages but had stopped claiming because the sellers refused to accept their claims. She said this wa s 10 year old rice purchased from Japan. It apparently was Thai or other non-J apanese rice which the Japanese had purchased from third countries and not use d because it was not to the taste of the Japanese. She said when claims had be en made before about the weight discrepancies they were told when the rice was packed it had weighed the full amount but over the years the moisture in the rice had evaporated and that is why the rice weighed less. I told her I felt t his was no excuse and the sellers should make for the difference in weight at the time the rice is bought. I was surprised that sellers of rice to people t hreatened with famine could be permitted to take such advantage of them.

The quality of the rice on examination, however, was of very good qual ity. Hardly any broken pieces.

A monitor carefully counted all the sacks and wrote the details into h is book.

After we had unloaded everything we returned to the hotel for lunch an d I requested to meet a family which had been uprooted by the flood. I heard m any homes had been demolished and those families had either been placed into n ew apartments being built along the main street (usually five story walk-ups) or were still living with friends, coworkers or relatives.

We walked up three flights of one of these newly built apartments and visited a family where the grandfather was celebrating his 60th birthday, an a uspicious event, and various sons and daughters and grandchildren had assemble d with him. We had a lively conversation with them for about an hour, all of w hich Joseph videotaped, and the grandchildren were prompted into singing a son g. They occupied a three story apartment and the eldest son and his family wer e living with them. Two sons and a son-in-law all worked in the city's chemica l factory which produces fertilizer.

We walked about reunification and relatives. This family has relatives in South Korea whom they haven't seen or heard from in nearly 50 years but th ey also have relatives living in the States who have visited them in Anju. I a sked about their rice ration and was informed before the flood each person rec eived 600 grams a day but this was now reduced to 450, or 150 grams per meal. Families get their allotted rice twice a month in sacks at rice distribution c enters.

On the street I stopped a man riding on a bicycle and surprised him by speaking English to him as he got off his bike. This was a way to be able to pick my own candidate at random and inquire about the food situation. My gui de then came over to interpret. He told us he was in his thirties, a driver, h ad two children and didn't known exactly what his rice ration was "because m y wife takes care of that and does the cooking" but stated he "was probably" g etting a lesser ration that before but it did not bother him. He was not hungr y.

After returning to Pyongyang we went to the warehouse where a lot of c lothing we had shipped was stored and also boxes of powdered milk donations f rom Wyeth-Eisai and shoes from Ohtsuka Shoe Co. We will take these with us to Huichon.

From here I dropped by to the residence of the Cuban ambassador, Jose Ramon Rodrigues Varona, who had stopped by the hotel earlier to look for me. H e is a colleague of my good friend Amb. Gerra, the Cuban ambassador in Beijin g, who was formerly the envoy to Tokyo. And we had a late dinner at the Koryo Hotel with Vladmir I. Azaroushkin, counsellor of the Russian Embassy.

This morning we will leave soon for another distribution in Huichon County of Chagang Province.

Pyongyang 3/11/96 (Report #5)

We left at 8:30 a.m. again yesterday morning in our two Mercedes Benzes with our guides, Mr. Li Jong In and Mr. Kim Dae Gil for Huichon County in Chagang Province. Mrs. Nam also joined us again. Huichon is about 130 kilometers north of Pyongyang. We met five trucks loaded with 50 tons of rice (which we borrowed again from the Cereal Corp. because our ship has still not arrived) and stopped at a warehouse to pick up the powdered milk donated by Wyeth Eisai and shoes from Otsuka Shoe Company.

We then drove for several hours on a picturesque newly completed highway and then turned off to even more scenic winding mountain roads to Huichon City. I could well imagine if a few good hotels, a golf course and an airport were situated near here, throngs of Japanese could fly in for weekends of rest and recreation, unbothered by long lines to play golf and it would be less than a two hour flight from Tokyo.

We stopped briefly for a rest and a lunch hosted by Mr. Pak Kang Gun, Chairman of the Administration and Economic Committee of Huichon, at the Huichon Hotel. Mr. Pak, who is the equivalent of the city's mayor, expressed the hope that we would send more rice to Huichon in the future and I promised we would focus our next campaign on this city which had suffered greatly during the flood. Thousands of homes had been destroyed and not all the victims were yet housed in new ones. The city of 220,000 is an industrial city with two joint venture factories. One is jointly run with a Japanese-Korean and produces silk threads from cocoons which are exported to Japan; the other is a machinery plant that was established with the Soviet Union but since its collapse, neither parts nor funds have been coming in and the plant is practically inoperative. The city is considering other investors. I asked Mr. Pak how rice donations such as ours would help the food shortage and he said this was supplementary rice for food victims in addition to the reduced rations people were now getting. He said it would go to the neediest.

We left for the city's rice warehouse and watched a group of workers there unload rice as we had observed it in Unpa and Anju on the previous days.This time the rice sacks were white. The origin was Vietnam. The quality was almost perfect and the random sacks we checked all weighed the full amount.

After unloading four trucks we took a final truck of 10 tons of rice to a neighborhood rice distribution center were about 50 people had been gathered to receive rice I would distribute personally. These were all families whose homes were completely destroyed by the flood, who had lost their possessions and lived in camps until their new homes were completed and where they now reside. While giving them rice and shoes I talked with them about their lives and food experiences. This group was getting an extra ration through me. Each one presented a slip allowing them to receive this ration, based on family size.

Our final stop was the Huichon Hospital where we would donate the powdered milk. Dr. Cha Ki Chol, the deputy superintendent; Dr. Yu Kil Yong, chief of the public health department; Dr. Li Kwang Ho, pediatrician, and Ms. Yu Sun Yong, a pediatric nurse greeted us in front of the hospital. We went to Dr. Cha's office to present him with the infant formula powdered milk cartons and explain how it is used.

Dr. Cha then took us to a room occupied by four mothers with their severely malnourished children. One of the children was crying with apparent pain. The mothers holding these children looked sad and concerned. Dr. Cha explained that during the flood, water had filled the hospital's basement nearly to the ceiling and the ten boilers were now broken; there have been no funds available to repair or replace them. Consequently the hospital is now too cold to house patients except the most severe cases who are in rooms heated by stoves. Most of the patients are being treated in their homes and the hospital's 500 beds are mainly empty. Surgery is performed on the second flood and as soon as they are able, the patients are moved to their homes. The doctors are out all day on house calls. The four most serious malnourished children we saw were kept at hospital. Another 20 were being treated at home.

I asked Dr. Cha about the boiler repair and what it would take to fix them. He said they might eventually be fixed under the government budget but there was not enough funds around. If he had $10,000 from an outside source, he said, they could order the parts and engineers immediately from the North Korean factory that makes such boilers and they would get a priority repair. These boilers would then be in working condition again in two months or so and the hospital could be operative again. This is the major general hospital in Huichon, serving the general population.

I have chosen to make a priority appeal to repair these boilers through this Internet Home Page. I hereby appeal to all the readers of this Home Page to consider contributing to a special fund aimed at collecting $10,000 to get these boilers fixed as soon as possible. Once this fund is reached I will wire the money immediately directly to Dr. Cha and we will subsequently learn of its progress.

...Bernard and Joseph Krisher returned to Tokyo via Beijing on Wednesday night.

Pyongyang 3/12/96 (Report #6)

We learned yesterday morning that our ship, the Ryong Gang, had finally arrived during the night of March 10th and our rice would be off loaded the next morning (March 11) so after breakfast we drove to Nampo port, about 30 minutes from Pyongyang, with Mr. Kim, Mr. Li and two officials from the Korea Cereal Export & Import Corp., Mr. Kim Ha Il, director, and Mr. Choo Gwang Wook who joined as interpreter.

They took us directly to the ship, which we boarded and looked down into the freight storage area below the deck where we saw our 260 tons of rice in 50 kilo burlap bags together with other rice. Before our arrival, cranes had already off-loaded most of 100 tons of our rice onto 20 trucks we had hired. Ten tons were being loaded onto each truck. The Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee had obtained these trucks for us from the central transportation organization with considerable difficulty as such trucks are in constant motion transporting goods from all over the country. They provided the trucks and drivers without charge while we offered to pay just for the fuel which in this case was $800 for the 20 trucks to go to Anju for a second donation mission there.

Previously we had donated 50 tons each (with five hired trucks) to Unpa, Anju and Huichon.

We watched this loading operation, then returned to the Koryo Hotel for lunch and met the trucks again at around 4 p.m. after all the rice had loaded, in downtown Pyongyang in front of the Pyongyang Hotel.

This ship came from Japan with Thai rice purchased from Japan. Our rice was said to be consolidated with rice that had been ordered by commercial establishments such as hotels, restaurants, and cooperative enterprises, also rice purchased by the government to supplement domestic civilian shortages.

While waiting for the trucks to arrive, we learned that our convoy would be accompanied by several officials whose help had been recruited to assure a smooth journey.

Mr. Oak Tae Roo, in charge of all government civilian truck transport, who manages some 3,000 trucks and perhaps more than twice as many drivers, drove up in his car to greet us and thank us for our donation. He said this may have been the first time he had organized such a convoy of trucks to deliver rice which is usually shipped by rail.

Mr. Chi Yong Gil, director of the government's cereal department and the superior of Mrs. Nam, who had accompanied us the last two days and who was with us again, also joined us on the trip to Anju. They all thanked us and the Internet campaign for our concern over their flood victims.

While waiting for all the trucks to arrive, we chatted on the street and Joseph videoed our conversation. In an informal discussion, I elicited strong denials from everyone that such rice could be diverted to the military.

The consensus also was the food shortage was growing more severe every day with the worst yet to come. Some said April and Mrs. Nam predicted May could be a very severe month of food shortage if international donations did not increase.

I asked Mrs. Nam about other cereal donations such as wheat and maize, which was considerably less expensive per ton than rice and had about the same nutritional value (according to Trevor Page of WFP). I inquired if it might not be more worthwhile to donate twice as much maize as rice. She insisted this was a personal, not an official answer, but said she agreed with me.

I also inquired about the rationing system. It was explained that the government subsidized the rice, selling it to the public at a much lower rate than it purchased it from abroad or from the farming cooperatives. Rice was also rationed according to one's type of workQ-not position. Average rations used to be 200 grams per meal for adults or 600 grams a day but heavy laborers such as miners or farmers had higher rations, i.e. 800 grams. Those of 600 gram rations per day had been cut to 450 but some of the high ration workers such as miners were said to be still on 800 where it was possible. Donations such as mine, Mrs. Nam, and also others I questioned independently, said would enable eligible persons among flood victims who required extra food intake to receive supplementary rations. Candidates to receive such additional occasional rations were chosen by local community or work team leaders who knew the health or age factors of their teams and made such decisions on a fair basis, I was told. Such was the case where I personally helped to distribute my rice in Huichon a few days before. The people who had lined up for our rice had large families, older parents, young children or ill people in their households.

Twenty trucks loaded with our rice had now all arrived and our convoy took off for Anju on the recently completed expressway. It was a dramatic and moving scene to see all these trucks following our two cars. We reached Anju just before sundown and were still able to photograph and video the sacks being unloaded inside the guarded rice storehouse, this time the quantity was four times the amount as before.

After all the trucks had been unloaded we drove to the Chong Chon Hotel for a delicious dinner, served by a very sweet waitress who repeated everything that was said. When I said thank you she would say thank you and when Joseph said "kam-sahamnida" (thank you) she would repeat that too. The hotel was barely lit, to conserve energy. The lobby, toilets, etc. were all unlit and persons accompanied us with flashlights as we walked through the lobby. The dining room had one, probably a 75 or 100 watt bulb hanging on the ceiling. But the food, service, variety of local wines and beer were excellent. The wines soon heated us up, as the dining room was also unheated, and the dimly-lit dinner had a candle-lit, romantic atmosphere. The conversation about the flood victims and distribution continued, but we also talked about the children and families of those seated around the table, including banter with the waitress and much humor.

Earlier in the day I could not get the scene of the Huichon Hospital with its broken boilers, empty beds, malnourished children in the ward, and others confined at home, because of the lack of heat in the hospital, out of my mind. A number of patients would probably die this winter because of the hospital's inability to provide proper care. The doctor had said $10,000 would fix the boilers and the patients could then be moved back in. I decided to try to raise the $10,000 (in yen) as soon as possible in an emergency appeal once I got back to Tokyo.

So early in the morning, after breakfast, I asked one of our guides to contact Dr. Cha Ki Chol, the deputy superintendent of the hospital, to inquire if he could come to Pyongyang before my departure so I could provide him directly with a partial contribution toward the repair of the boilers. When we returned to the Koryo Hotel, Dr. Cha had arrived and I presented him with 400,000 yen ($4,100) toward the $10,000 which I told him I hoped to raise within the next month.

He seemed to be moved by our quick reaction. He said the mothers of the malnourished children we had seen had been encouraged by our visit to the hospital and wanted to convey their thanks for our visiting their ward. He said he would begin immediately to take the necessary procedures to get the boilers repaired.

Kim Sok Chol, our guide from three previous trips, whom we had not seen on this visit, showed up at the hotel just then to look for us. I had left word at his society that we were in town and he himself had been abroad and just returned over the weekend. It was nice to see him before our departure the next morning. We also saw Ludo at the Koryo's second story bar near the billiard tables. So Joseph, Mr. Kim, Ludo and myself had a few beers together before Joseph and I went up to our room after midnight to pack for our departure today.

Mr. Li and Mr. Kim met us in the lobby at 8:30 this morning ready to leave for the airport. Mr. Li brought a bunch of documents--receipts for the purchase of gas, confirmations of the rice distribution, thank you letters to donors, etc.

He also brought a response from the Flood Damage and Rehabilitation Committee to four questions I raised some days before about donations and rice distribution. The response appears at the top of the Home Page and is repeated below.

###

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS ON FAMINE SITUATION, DISTRIBUTION AND DONATION POLICY BY DPRK GOVERNMENT BY OUR INTERNET APPEAL

        The following written response our questions,  presented during our 
rice distribution visit to Pyongyang this week, was given to us on March 12, 
the day of our departure.

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