PYONGYANG: The United Nations was able to help barely 15 percent of the North Koreans it aimed to support with basic food needs last year, its top official in Pyongyang said yesterday, as donor funding dried up in the face of political tensions, reports AFP. The implementation of UN Security Council sanctions also hit humanitarian work in the country, with aid supplies and financial transfers delayed or stopped, UN resident coordinator Tapan Mishra told AFP.

“We have roughly 40 percent of the population that are in need of humanitarian assistance,” Mishra told AFP. “10.3 million people in this country need help.” The isolated North industrialised rapidly following the end of the Korean War and for a time was wealthier than the South, but funding from Moscow came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was followed by a crippling famine and chronic economic mismanagement. Under current leader Kim Jong Un it has made rapid progress in its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, earning itself multiple sets of UN Security Council sanctions, with more measures imposed unilaterally by the US, EU, South Korea and others.

They remain in place despite a rapid diplomatic rapprochement on the peninsula, with a North-South summit due later this month ahead of talks between Kim and US President Donald Trump.