Its Population Denounced

PYONGYANG, March 1 (KCNA) -- The spokesman for the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee of the DPRK answered a question put by KCNA today as regards an anti-DPRK smear campaign launched by a south Korean intelligence service while floating a nasty rumour about the population of the DPRK in a bid to frustrate international humanitarian assistance to it.

Warning that south Korea must act with discretion, the spokesman said:

A south Korean intelligence service is spreading these days a rumour that three million people of the north have died of starvation over the last four years.

In order to attach credibility to their rumour, it quoted a “result of the population census carried out by the Ministry of Public Security of the DPRK,” saying it was confirmed that the population of the north decreased from 25 million in 1995 to 22 million in 1998. On top of this, the service, citing “data” and “analysis,” alleged that international humanitarian assistance is helpless because the famine-stricken DPRK has diverted most of relief food to the army.

This is a whooping lie which was hurriedly invented by those who do not know what organ of the DPRK is in charge of population census.

The latest population census in the DPRK was the wholesale census carried out by the Central Statistics Bureau of the DPRK in 1993 in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund. The census showed that in 1993, the population of the DPRK was 21,213,000, or a 1.5 percent natural increase in population.

Taking into account this rate of natural increase in population, the population of the DPRK will reach as many as 23 million in the year 2000. This factual figure was officially recognized or is being quoted by the United Nations, the U.N. Population Fund and other international organizations.

The whooping lie being floated by the south Korean intelligence service over the population of the DPRK throws a revealing light over its dirty nature once again.

It is not first time that the intelligence service which is accustomed to intrigues and deception resorted to ill- intentioned schemes to check international humanitarian assistance to the DPRK.

For example, it had once brought disgrace upon itself in the eyes of the world by circulating a rumor that the DPRK government diverted fund relief in aid for natural disasters to military spending. To make matters worse, it put mixed bio-chemical substance with food and other relief materials for the DPRK to achieve their sinister design, thus doing harm to or killing a large number of people in the north.