February 17, 2010
SEOUL (AFP) - North Korean teenage refugees are far shorter and thinner than their South Korean peers, official data showed Wednesday, amid reports of a deepening food crisis in the impoverished communist state.
The height of North Korean males aged between 13 and 18 who have recently arrived in South Korea averages 155.7 centimetres (5.14 feet), 13.5 centimetres less than their South Korean counterparts, according to data at Seoul's Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The North Korean girls of the same age group are 151.1 centimetres tall on average, 8.3 centimetres shorter than their South Korean peers, they said.
The weight of the North Korean male teenagers averages 47.3 kilogrammes (94.6 pounds), 13.5 kilogrammes less than that of their southern peers, they said.
The North Korean girls weigh 46.9 kilogrammes on average, 5.4 kilogrammes lighter than their South Korean counterparts, they said.
"The data indicate that the North Korean escapees have been exposed to severe malnutrition and other poor health conditions," said an official at the South Korean health organisation.
He said the report was based on checkups of 8,214 North Korean refugees, including 1,257 people aged 18 or below, who crossed the border between 2005 and 2008.
A growing number of North Koreans have fled their homeland, which has relied on outside aid to help feed its people since a famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands.
About 2,000 people have starved to death in North Korea this winter, Good Friends, a Seoul-based welfare group with contacts in the North, said Tuesday, citing an unnamed North Korean ruling party official.
The South's unification ministry said last week the North produced an estimated 4.11 million tons of grain last year, less than its projected annual demand of 5.4 million tons.
The estimated shortfall is equal to almost four months' food supply this year, according to the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul.
