Source: IFRC
Date: 9 Jun 2004

by John Sparrow in Pyongyang
Kim Suk Hyang's home was one of 1,850 destroyed when an April
22 train explosion tore apart the little town of Ryongchon in
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The blast left 161 people dead, over 1,300 injured and
thousands deprived of everything they possessed.

Suk Hyang, 45, looked around her in horror. Some 40 per cent
of her town, which lies close to the Chinese border, was
affected when two rail wagons of explosive material blew up.

The town's station and all around it was obliterated.
Buildings within a four-kilometre radius were damaged. Another
6,300 homes were partially damaged and water and electricity
supplies disrupted.

Friends and relatives took homeless people in, while others
squatted in public buildings. Such was the discomfort and
overcrowding, that a drift to the streets began. There,
temporary shelters appeared using Red Cross tarpaulins.

"People in Red Cross jackets came to us every day to ask what
we needed," said Suk Hyang.

"They wrote down what we said and came back with assistance.
One day I asked them if they were okay and they said they had
lost homes and family as well."

So Suk Hyang decided to join them. Today she's still homeless
but easing the plight of others, working as a Red Cross
volunteer.

Of those who died in Ryongchon, five were voluntary Red Cross
workers. Some 20 more were made homeless and another 30 had
their houses damaged. Among them was the woman who leads the
Red Cross response, local vice-chairperson Jong Kangson, 60.

She was shaken but determined. Within hours of the explosion
she had mobilized volunteers to set up first-aid posts and
prepare for a relief operation.

And in the weeks that have followed she has worked with them,
too, in the physical clean-up of the town. Jong Kangson's own
hands are bruised and torn by the labour.

Today the town resembles a huge building site. Thousands of
workers from other provinces have been brought in to help in
the reconstruction, using little but their hands and basic
tools in the absence of modern machinery.

As buildings are completed the homeless will be housed but a
few hundred families are still in street shelters and many,
many more still struggle. The Red Cross will continue to
support them.

"What the Red Cross means to a community was never more
visible than in this place," said Markku Niskala, Secretary
General of the International Federation when he visited
Ryongchon with a delegation of Red Cross leaders at the
weekend.

With Dr Yoon-Gun Lee, President of the Republic of Korea Red
Cross, Sir Nicholas Young, Director General of the British Red
Cross, John Mulvihill, Deputy Secretary General of the
Canadian Red Cross, Halvor Fossum Lauritzsen, head of
international relations at the Norwegian Red Cross, and Bjorn
Eder, head of international relations at the Swedish Red
Cross, he was in the DPRK to assess the Ryongchon situation.

Critically, though, they also examined the needs of long-term
programmes addressing the wider, enduring humanitarian crisis
in the country.

A Federation appeal for 1.6 million Swiss francs to support
Ryongchon operations has been filled and having provided
emergency relief, the Red Cross focus is now on seeing the
homeless through the difficult months ahead, rebuilding the
town's health clinic and restoring its water supply.

But needs spread beyond Ryongchon.

Millions of people in the DPRK remain in dire need of health
and nutritional assistance. Much of the population is
malnourished and other health problems are biting,
compromising a health system that has struggled for years to
keep its services running.

Hospitals short of supplies like pain killers and anaesthetics
make do with scant equipment and old and inadequate
instruments. Worryingly, however, levels of donor assistance
to the DPRK have declined and income flow is slow.

"Should donors react to the current security tensions on the
Korean peninsula and further reduce humanitarian aid to the
country, huge loss of life and increased suffering would be
the undoubted consequences. Gains made over nine years of
humanitarian operations would also be reversed," Alistair
Henley, head of the Federation's East Asia delegation, warns.

Even if all the humanitarian health programmes are filled, it
is estimated that health facilities would still be short of
half their needs.

With Federation support, the DPRK Red Cross provides lifelines
of drugs and medical equipment to 1,762 poorly maintained and
undersupplied hospitals in four operating regions with a total
population of more than 6.1 million people.

After the summer, when the Red Cross moves into a fifth area,
the number of health facilities reached will rise to 2,150.

Henley comments: "We are fully aware that it would be
politically expedient for some powers to see humanitarian
assistance to the DPRK reduced and deployed elsewhere.
Fortunately our donors continue to separate humanitarian aid
from politics and we would strongly condemn any pressure
placed upon them to change that policy."

Health promotion, community-based first aid and disaster
preparedness programmes must also be maintained. Ryongchon
showed the importance of disaster preparedness.

A fast Red Cross response was possible because relief
warehouses contained sufficient pre-positioned stocks to meet
the immediate non-food needs of 15,000 families.

One of six preparedness warehouses spread around the country
was only a few kilometres from the blast.