BEIJING - The United Nations will end a decade of emergency food shipments to North Korea by January because the impoverished communist nation claims to have enough food coming from other sources, a local World Food Program official said Sunday.
Richard Ragan told The Associated Press the WFP is seeking to transform its mission in North Korea to development projects at the request of the government there. Discussions are ongoing with donors to find support for the shift, Ragan said from Beijing.
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"They claim they have enough food coming in from other sources," he said, indicating that it included aid from South Korea and increased trade with China. "They didn't want to create a culture of dependency."
North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people since disclosing in the mid-1990s that its government-run farm system had collapsed. Famine has killed an estimated 2 million people.
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