Concern Worldwide is to carry out projects worth $2 million (£1.3 million) next year in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Irish aid agency's deputy chief executive, Mr Paddy McGuinness, said in Beijing yesterday. This is more than double the amount committed by Concern in 1998 to the isolated communist country, which has had several years of severe food shortages.
"Millions of people remain vulnerable," said Mr McGuinness, before returning to Ireland after a week spent in North Korea, where Concern operations are conducted by the agency's full-time representative, Mr Mike McDonagh. "We are in the DPRK for the long term," he said.
The funding will come mainly from the EU, the US and the Swedish government, and will help pay for schemes such as a food-for-work environmental improvement, experiments with spring wheat and potatoes and greenhouse construction.
Last year, Concern provided winter jackets for 7,000 farmers and 5,000 children living in a designated area north of the capital, Pyongyang, using funds from the Irish Government.
The cloth was purchased in China and the coats manufactured in the DPRK, where many factories are at a standstill due to lack of raw materials. Concern also started a programme of repairing and constructing greenhouses, using 8,000 square metres of plastic imported from China and providing vegetable seeds and pesticide.
Concern is one of seven aid agencies, five UN bodies and a number of US organisations working under one umbrella in North Korea. Its target area, the hinterland of the northern city of Pyongsong, has a food deficit of 30,000 tonnes and Concern hopes to make up 12,500 tonnes through introducing spring wheat, a practice not used before in North Korea.
The food-for-work scheme will involve distributing wheat, rice, vegetable oil and sugar, supplied mainly by the EU, in return for work in improving damaged agricultural land.
Mr McGuinness said he was happy to be able to see with his own eyes that Concern's efforts in helping North Koreans in practical ways were benefiting those in greatest need. Recently the French organisation Doctors Without Frontiers left North Korea after 16 months because it said it had not been able to negotiate free access to bring humanitarian assistance to those most in need.
On Friday, the World Food Programme representative in North Korea, Mr David Morton, said on a visit to Beijing that North Korea was in the throes of a long-term food crisis.
The Catholic aid agency Trocaire has also provided millions of dollars of food aid for North Korea, working mainly through the Caritas organisation.