One million people have disappeared from famine-hit North Korea's official population total in a year.

Pyongyang has said the population now was 22.5 million, one million less than it revealed to two UN organisations last year.

Meanwhile, a survey of North Korean refugees in northeastern China has found that more than 70 per cent questioned had had at least one immediate family member die of starvation in North Korea.

Fewer than 10 per cent of the 2,193 refugees questioned said they had received any food aid before they left North Korea, South Korean non-governmental organisation the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees said.

Six members of the group delivered 2.5 million signatures to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata to petition for a halt to forced repatriation of North Korean refugees who had fled to China.

More than 100,000 North Korean refugees are believed to have crossed the North Korean border into northeastern China, said the survey, conducted from October to December last year. More than 60 per cent of the respondents had been arrested
and repatriated at least once. About 60 per cent indicated they would commit suicide if arrested and repatriated. Ninety per cent said they did not want to return to North Korea.

In 1998, North Korea told a joint team from UN bodies that the country's population was 23.5 million.

North Korea's communist authorities have said the hermit state's population growth rate has fallen from 1.5 per cent to just 0.9 per cent, but they have admitted to 220,000 famine-related deaths in the past several years. North Korean statistics have long been a subject of speculation. Observers suspect Pyongyang is covering up the deaths of between two and three million people since 1995.

North Korea has not released either birth or death rates, making it hard to calculate the number of "excess deaths" attributable to famine. Infant mortality is very high due to the absence of drugs, unheated hospitals and difficulties in transporting pregnant women to hospital.

In 1998 Pyongyang allowed a rare random survey of child health under the supervision of UN medical experts.

It revealed that 16 per cent suffered from severe malnutrition and more than 60 per cent had severely stunted growth.

In December 1999 charity group Oxfam announced it was leaving North Korea after two years. It complained it had been unable to assess the impact of its programmes directed at water purification.

The UN was still not satisfied with its freedom to monitor food aid, despite improvements since 1995. It is still not possible to carry out random checks on distribution.

(Source: South China Morning Post)

Defectors Repatriated by China

The seven North Korean refugees, who escaped from the communist block country to China then eventually to Russia, are believed to have been deported back to North Korea by the Chinese authorities following Russia's return of them to
China. According to a high-level official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MoFAT) the Chinese government confirmed that it returned the seven North Koreans to their country of origin. The government official said, "The Chinese Ambassador in Korea, Wu Dawei, reported this fact to the MoFAT and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva also confirmed the return of the seven."  

The seven refugees crossed to the Russian border from China in November last year and were arrested by the Russian border patrol. After they were arrested, the UNHCR acknowledged them as refugees and made plans to hand them over to
the South Korea government. But in January, the Russian government abruptly sent them to China. After being arrested, the North Koreans told a Russian television crew that only death a waits them if they return to North Korea, and pleaded with the Russian authorities to let them stay-even in a Russian prison if they have to-rather than return to North Korea.

The refugees had high hopes they would not be sent back to North Korea since the Chinese authorities promised to take care of the matter with humanitarian principles--although it did not consider the seven defectors as refugees. Then MoFAT Minister Hong Soon-young appeared at the National Assembly on December 6 last year and said that they were expected to come to South Korea with the help of the UNHCR.