Seoul - People have begun to starve to death in famine-plagued North Korea, where food supplies are declining, the Buddhist aid group Good Friends said Friday. The Korean organization quoted an unnamed senior North Korean ruling party official as saying the situation is as bad as it was in the mid-1990s, when 1 million to 2 million people were believed to have died of hunger.
Large numbers of deaths from famine are only "a question of time," the official was quoted as saying.
Among the areas seeing deaths by starvation are farming villages near the city of Sariwon, 60 kilometres south of the capital, Pyongyang, Good Friends said.
One or two North Koreans die daily from hunger, the group said without naming a source for its information.
Its report came after warnings from international aid groups that North Korea was experiencing severe food shortages as world commodity prices rise and the international community reduces its aid to the impoverished Stalinist country.
UN experts have also warned that a famine of the magnitude of the mid-1990s could result.
Years of mismanagement, natural disasters and the loss of North Korea's support from the former Soviet Union are considered the main reasons for its more than decadelong food shortages.
