A VISIT TO THE LAND OF THE VANISHING LAKE

By EASON JORDAN

Eason Jordan, president of CNN International, emerged last Saturday from his seventh visit to North Korea since 1994. Here is his account of that country's famine:

The sun is relentless. The rice paddies, which need at least a foot of water, have less than one or two inches. The corn, which should be as tall as I am at this time of year, is barely half my height. Prospects for both the rice and the corn harvests are bleak. Everything is parched, and with each rainless day, water is vanishing with cruel rapidity. One evening I was at a huge lake, the Sohung reservoir, in the country's breadbasket. To be accurate, I was at what was once a huge lake. It is 96% gone, simply evaporated into thin air. The man in charge appeared shaken as he explained that the sun will suck Sohung dry by the end of August.

Yet the famine here is more subtle than the sub-Saharan ones, where people starved to death because there was no food. There is still food here. Just not enough in the daily diet to avoid widespread malnutrition and an increasing number of fatal illnesses. People are surviving on just one-fifth of the calories required to maintain health. All food is rationed.

I did not see anyone starving to death. But perhaps that was because North Korean officials politely ignored CNN's requests to see the worst affected victims. Still, the vast majority of the thousands of people I saw were thin and in some cases mildly emaciated, even in the capital, Pyongyang, where more food is allotted to the populace than in the countryside. The officials refuse to discuss the UNICEF estimate that 80,000 children may soon die. They will say only that the famine is responsible for at least several dozen deaths caused by disease. They claim they are unable to provide a precise death toll.

Meanwhile, the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, exhorts his people to persevere in their "arduous march," allowing for no discussion of the possibility that years of Stalinist economic policies may have caused the famine. Yet at the same time, there is acknowledgment that something dramatic must happen. Says relief official Jong Yun Hyong: "We know we can't rely on emergency aid forever." Even to march in place, you need food.