North Korea urges more grain production as food crisis grows

The appeal from the North's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, came as aid agencies warn that the communist country faces a food crisis because of massive floods last year.

"The most pressing and important issue now is to drastically increase grain production so as to smoothly resolve the problem of eating, the problem of food by ourselves," the newspaper said in a lengthy editorial carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.

It said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has called for an "agricultural revolution."

North Korea has relied on foreign assistance to help feed its 23 million people since the mid 1990s.

The food situation has worsened this year because of last year's devastating floods. North Korea has refused to ask for help from previous aid donor South Korea in anger over its new government's hard-line stance toward the North.

On Friday, the Seoul-based aid group Good Friends said North Koreans are dying of hunger in rural areas and a massive famine is a matter of time. It also quoted an unidentified North Korean official as saying the food situation is as bad as the famine that hit the country in the mid-1990s, which killed as many as 2 million people.

The U.N. World Food Program warned last month that North Korea faces a food crisis, saying the country's annual food deficit is expected to nearly double from 2007 to 1.83 million tons. The agency estimated 6.5 million people were short of food, and said that number could rise if shortages are not addressed.

The United States has offered to provide food and held talks this week in North Korea over how to guarantee aid gets to the needy. North Korea said Thursday the talks were "in-depth and good."