Malnutrition in North Korean children has dropped in the past two years, thanks largely to food aid, but remains disturbingly high, a UN survey said. The nutrition gains, however, could be reversed if international support declines in the wake of a crippling famine, said Richard Ragan, the World Food Programme?s country director for North Korea.

?I think the main conclusion that we in WFP are able to draw from the survey is that food aid has worked,? Ragan said. ?We think we can mainly attribute this improvement to the provision of humanitarian assistance as well as to a slight increase in the overall production in agriculture.? The collapse of the Soviet Union and Pyongyang?s Communist allies in eastern Europe, coupled with successive natural disasters and bad harvests, unleashed widespread famine from the mid-1990s that aid experts say killed more than 1 million people.

The rate of chronic malnourishment, or stunting of growth, for children under six was 37 per cent, down from 42 percent in the last study released in October 2002, the survey showed. Acute malnutrition, or wasting, declined to 7 percent among young children from 9 percent in 2002, showed the latest survey, which randomly sampled 4,800 children under six. For children aged 1-3 years old, the rate was 30 percent lower than in 2002.

The findings of the fourth UN nutritional survey for North Korea, known officially as the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea (DPRK), were positive, but aid was still much needed. ?The good news aside, we?ve still got a lot of work to do,? Ragan said. The percentages of stunting and underweight children were high.

<B>John Ruwitch</B>