Heavy rains hit North Korea

Heavy rains that battered North Korea in recent weeks have heavily damaged crops, state media said Monday, dealing a further blow to the impoverished country as it struggles to avert a food crisis.

Strong downpours pounded many parts of North Korea between Friday and Sunday, including Kangwon province, which received 12.7 inches of rain, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. The harsh weather came a week after similar rains lashed the country, it said.

The weather "inflicted heavy losses to various sectors of the national economy including agriculture and to the people's living," KCNA reported, without elaborating.

The heavy rains came as North Korea faces its worst food crisis since the late 1990s, when an estimated 2 million people died of hunger. The North has since relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people.

The World Food Program, the U.N. food agency, warned last week that millions of North Koreans were at risk of slipping toward precarious hunger levels and that the food shortage also threatened to cause widespread malnutrition.

North Korea's food situation was worsened by devastating floods last year.

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