UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos will visit North Korea next month for a first-hand look at the isolated state, which has suffered chronic food shortages for years, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
Amos is planning to tour the impoverished country from October 17-21 as part of an Asian trip that will also take in China and South Korea, spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said.
North Korea has pleaded for food aid this year due to bad weather and the impact of international sanctions imposed for its nuclear program, winning donations in recent months from Russia, the European Union and U.N. organizations.
But South Korea and the United States have so far refused food aid, granting only emergency aid to help Pyongyang deal with flood damage from bad storms in the middle of the year. Washington says it is still assessing the North's requests, while Seoul says it doubts Pyongyang's pleas are genuine.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which Amos heads, launched a $218 million (136 million pounds) appeal for North Korea this year, but so far it has been less than 10 percent funded, Bunker said.
In May, the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund assigned $10 million to four U.N. agencies to address food shortages caused by an especially harsh winter. The world body described North Korea's food crisis at the time as "one of the world's most chronically underfunded humanitarian emergencies."
However, a Reuters correspondent who visited North Korea earlier this week said the country appears to have emerged from the winter and spring crisis, at least in the far north and south, where a variety of crops are nearly ready for harvest.
North Korea is a member of the United Nations and was visited separately last year by U.N. political chief Lynn Pascoe and by Josette Sheeran, head of the U.N. World Food Program.
(Reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
