Rural village in the country side

“A new agreement with the government now gives the WFP ‘the best access and working conditions’ it has ever enjoyed, (Tony) Banbury said, allowing the agency to deploy more foreign staff than ever before. For the first time, the WFP is using Korean speakers and more monitors outside the capital.”

According to a variety of our in-country sources and news reports, we can confirm that the World Food Program (WFP) is having unprecedented access in North Korea.

Although the WFP has to let the North Korean government know about the monitoring plan on a weekly basis, the organization seems confident that the daily monitoring spot checks are meaningful and accurate.

This type of monitoring is important as the proposed plan from WFP is extremely large (and expensive) as it tries to reach 6.3 million people and will cost more than $500 million over the next year.