North Korea seeks help after massive flooding

SEOUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) North Korea is seeking foreign help after massive flooding left hundreds dead or missing and swept away many buildings, a UN aid agency spokesman said on Tuesday.

North Korea, which has struggled with chronic food shortages for years, said in a report early today that floodwaters caused ''tens of thousands of hectares of farmland (to be) inundated, buried under silt and washed away''.

Paul Risley, Asia spokesman with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said: ''If the figures are borne out by our own assessment, then we are very concerned that this is a significant emergency crisis.

''It is still very early in this process but we have received a preliminary request from North Korean authorities, asking for our assistance,'' Risley said by telephone from Bangkok.

He said a UN agency assessment team left the capital Pyongyang today, headed for flood-hit areas of the secretive communist state.

Later on Tuesday, North Korea's official KCNA news agency said coal mining pits, power lines and substations had also been inundated or damaged.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he would ask Washington to see what help could be offered.

''We've just been getting the press reports today on that flood, and in fact I asked if we could get some more information on it to see precisely what the situation is and to see what the appropriateness of assistance might be,'' he said in Beijing.

''I think we, like many other governments, will be looking into further details on it to see what can be done,'' Hill told reporters. ''We'll certainly be looking at it very seriously.'' Some 63,300 families had been left homeless and nearly 6,000 Red Cross volunteers were carrying out evacuation and relief activities, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. ''The Red Cross rescue team in the capital city saved 14 people from swirling waters,'' it said.

TV IMAGES Three big storms hit North Korea in 2006, and a pro-Pyongyang newspaper reported that more than 800 people were killed or went missing in the resulting floods.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it expected damage to be worse than last year.

A unification ministry official said the government was looking into possible flood aid for North Korea but had not received any request from Pyongyang.

The floods were not expected to affect a planned leaders' summit between the two Koreas on Aug. 28-30, he added.

In an unusual move, the state's official TV station broadcast images of the damage, showing rain-swollen rivers and pedestrians walking through waist-deep water in flooded Pyongyang streets. The broadcast was monitored in Seoul.

KCNA said at least 800 public buildings and more than 540 bridges had been washed away, while sections of railroad had been destroyed and thousands of homes ruined.

It also reported that scores of coal pits were submerged and many facilities destroyed.

More than 500 high voltage power towers collapsed, five electric power substations of large capacity were inundated, and more than 10 transformers and other facilities severely damaged, KCNA added.

North Korea's infrastructure outside of showcase projects in Pyongyang is mostly a shambles. North Korea has few funds for building and still uses power and rail lines built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

The flooding has hit most of the southern half of North Korea and includes the capital and some of its most productive agricultural regions. More rain is forecast for those areas over the next few days.

REUTERS RSA KP2229