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GENEVA: North Korea's food situation has worsened again, forcing its communist regime to allow some markets to reopen this month, a UN human rights expert said Monday.
"Those at the top cream off the best produce and those at the bottom eat rice porridge or corn and forage for foods," said the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn.
"Food... is now worse because of the clampdown on the market system, inhibitions imposed on people in terms of production and the re-evaluation of the won (North Korean currency)," he told journalists.
"In 2009 and now it has got worse again."
However, Muntarbhorn said a clampdown on market trading had met with localised resistance and Pyongyang was forced to give further ground this month as prices soared.
"I have information that after the re-evaluation of the won, which has caused huge inflation and deprivation, currently - this month - there has been a reopening of some markets," the UN expert said.
He called for food aid to continue but acknowledged the reluctance of donor countries to help deliveries that may be siphoned off to the North's elite while Pyongyang's own spending focused on its nuclear programme.
"We can't expect food aid from outside when national authorities don't allocate food adequately to the people and their military-first policy is an impediment to 'people first'."
Muntarbhorn presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, which accused North Korea's regime of turning the country into a "big prison," controlling its population with widespread and "horrific" abuses.
North Korea on Monday rejected the report as being inspired by a Western conspiracy to "eliminate the state and social system" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially known.
"My delegation categorically rejects the special rapporteur on the DPRK and his report," said the envoy to the UN in Geneva, Choe Myong-Nam.
Muntarbhorn said UN agencies in North Korea were due to release the results of their latest food survey of the country soon, although officials were not immediately able to confirm a date.
- AFP/sc
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