Millions of North Koreans suffer chronic food shortages and dire health care, leaving one in three young children stunted, the United Nations says.

Some 16 million people ― two-thirds of the population ― depend on the state rationing system and suffer varying degrees of chronic food insecurity, six UN agencies operating inside the North say in a report released Tuesday.

About one in three children aged under five are stunted ― too short for their age ― because of malnutrition, it says. The health care system is “in dire shape,” plagued by frequent power cuts and with less than 30 percent of essential drug needs covered.

The North is the only Asia-Pacific country not on track to meet Millennium Development Goals on reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating disease, says the report dated May 29.

Inadequate access to safe water and poor sanitation, coupled with poor hygiene, are mainly to blame for the high incidence of diarrhea among the under-fives.

The report says natural disasters such as floods and landslides, worsened by the deforestation of slopes, pose serious threats to life.

The UN says the structural causes of food shortages can only be fully addressed through government policy changes, but stresses that humanitarian assistance does save lives.

It says UN agencies need $198 million for their activities in the North this year but less than 40 percent of this had been donated as of May. (AFP)