North Korea Floods Destroy Thousands of Homes, Factories Near China Border
Flooding swept away crops, houses and damaged power equipment in North Korea, battering an economy already straining under international sanctions and struggling with shortages of food and goods.
Thousands of homes, public buildings and factories were ruined and about 14,850 hectares of farmland “submerged, buried or washed away,” North Korea’s state-run Korea Central News Agency reported yesterday. Railways were blocked, power equipment broken and bridges destroyed in the floods, the news service said.
An unprecedented amount of rain had already inundated the Yalu River system bordering China and more was forecast for the region, Xinhua News Agency reported late yesterday, citing a spokesman at the flood control headquarters in the border city of Dandong on the river’s lower reaches. Liaoning and Jilin provincial authorities suspended shipping on the river, it said.
The Tumen River, which forms North Korea’s northern border, has also seen record water levels in the past two weeks, Xinhua said.
The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, home to a large ethnic Korean population, has suffered the worst floods in a hundred years this year, with nearly a quarter of its 2.18 million residents affected, Xinhua said, citing the Yanbian government.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Richardson in Hong Kong at Brichardson8@bloomberg.net
More News:
- Asia ·
- Eastern Europe ·
- Germany ·
- Italy
Rate this Page