SEOUL, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- The World Food Program Friday welcomed a 100,000-ton donation of corn from South Korea to the agency's emergency operation in North Korea.
"We are deeply grateful for this generous contribution," WFP Executive Director James Morris said in Seoul. "It will allow us to continue providing vital, supplemental rations to the neediest of the needy in North Korea through the harsh winter."
The U.N. agency implements a strict "no access, no food" policy, with assistance provided only to the 161 out of 203 counties and districts, accounting for 85 per cent of the 23 million population in North Korea, where staff can monitor.
Before Seoul's pledge, WFP said it had secured only 54 per cent of the $171 million needed to help feed the most vulnerable Koreans in the north this year, and was forced to drop many of them from its distribution plans for long periods during the year.
Morris says it costs just $26 to feed a child for a year in the north.
