North Korea urges all-out campaign for harvest
Posted: 15 September 2008 1606 hrs

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SEOUL : North Korea, which is suffering chronic food shortages, called Monday for all-out efforts to reap a good harvest, which it said was the most urgent task facing the communist country.

"Autumn-harvesting is the most important task," the impoverished North's ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial.

The reclusive nation is grappling with acute food shortages and a declining economy. It suffered a full-scale famine in the 1990s which killed hundreds of thousands and needs foreign aid to help feed its 23 million people.

Chronic food shortages worsened this year following floods and shortages of fertiliser last year.

The UN's World Food Programme says hunger is at its worst since the famine years, with up six million people in immediate need.

Rodong Sinmun also quoted leader Kim Jong-Il as saying North Korea should mobilise "all available capability" for the autumn-harvest.

It did not say when Kim made such remarks -- he remained out of the public eye Monday amid heightened speculation over his health.

After Kim, 66, skipped a mass parade last week to mark the country's 60th anniversary, South Korean officials said he underwent brain surgery following a stroke last month but was recovering well.

Kim's health is a source of fevered speculation since he has not publicly nominated any successor among his three sons. He took over from his father, founding president Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994, in the communist world's only dynastic succession.

Seoul officials, fearful of potential instability in their nuclear-armed neighbour, have said he is still in control and no power vacuum exists.

But other reports have cast doubt on his long-term physical ability to run the nation, at a time when nuclear disarmament negotiations are deadlocked. Foreign officials and media have long speculated that Kim, a former smoker and heavy drinker, was ill. Seoul intelligence officials say they believe he has diabetes and heart problems.

- AFP/ir