SEOUL – North Korea today slammed a recent United Nations report on child malnutrition in the country as a “sheer lie”, saying it will need to review whether humanitarian assistance can “truly help us”, reported Yonhap News Agency.
It said the director of the Research Institute for Nutrition Care of Children from the North’s Health Ministry made the statement in response to the panel of experts’ report that close to 100,000 children in the North are suffering from malnutrition due to border restrictions over the coronavirus pandemic.
“I, as a person responsible for nutrition care of the children in our country, categorically reject this information, affirming that it, a sheer lie, is utterly baseless,” the director said in the statement released by the state’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“In my opinion, it is necessary to seriously examine whether ‘humanitarian cooperation’ under the signboard of UN and NGOs would truly help us and to take resolute counter-measures against the entity and organisations going about in cahoots with hostile forces,” he said. – Bernama, April 6, 2021
