North Korea reporting a serious drought

NAMPHO, North Korea -- North Korea is reporting a serious drought that could worsen already critical food shortages, but help is unlikely to come from the United States or South Korea following a widely criticized rocket launch.

North Korea has had little rain since April 27, with the western coastal areas particularly hard hit, according to a government weather agency in Pyongyang. The dry spell threatened to damage crops, officials said, as the country enters a critical planting season and as food supplies from the last harvest dwindle.

In an area of South Phyongan Province, which journalists from The Associated Press were allowed to visit, the sun-baked fields appeared parched and cracked, and farmers complained of extreme drought. Deeply tanned men and women in sun bonnets worked over cabbages and corn seedlings. Farmers cupped individual seedlings as they poured water from blue buckets onto the parched soil.

It was not clear whether the conditions around Nampho were representative of a wider region. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said it had not yet visited the affected regions to confirm the extent and severity of the drought.

The country's past appeals for food aid have been met with some skepticism amid concerns that aid would be diverted to the military or the Pyongyang elite, not reaching the hungry.

The United States agreed in February to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid in exchange for a freeze in nuclear and missile activities. That deal collapsed after North Korea launched a long-range rocket last month in what it called an attempt to send up a weather satellite. -- AP