Geographically, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not far from Taiwan. A direct flight would take only two and a half hours. But to many of us, it is a land hidden on the other side of the earth. Few of us know that many of its older citizens can still read Chinese.

At the end of January, the weather in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, usually varies from -5 to -10 degrees Celsius [14-23 F]. When our Air China flight was about to land, an announcement suddenly blared from the speakers: "There are many high-rise buildings in the city of Pyongyang, the streets are wide and clean, and it is a beautiful, modern city..."

Hidden behind the high-rises

However, the beauty can only be seen from a distance. On closer inspection, you find many broken windows mended with plastic sheets. The outer surfaces of many high-rise buildings were filthy and decayed. I wondered whether the city had any time to clean itself.

Pyongyang has some things that other major metropolitan areas do not have: wider and cleaner streets, fewer vehicles and thus less air pollution. Serious-looking people on the streets are dressed in blue, black, gray or other dull colors. A few women wear more brightly colored clothes, bringing some relief to this Soviet-style concrete jungle.

One special feature of Pyongyang is the extensive display of sculptures and paintings of Kim Il Sung, the first president of North Korea. When we got off the plane, we were taken to lay bouquets before a twenty-meter [66 ft] bronze statue of Kim Il Sung. It seems that this leader holds a high place in the hearts of the people. Near the hotel where we were staying, there was a huge board painted with a scene of Uncle Sam being beaten down by North Korean soldiers. This seems to be the only country that still retains the fundamental old Communist ideology.

Reality tells all

We were not here for sightseeing in the winter. We just wanted to see what North Korea had done with the 700,000 clothes donated by Tzu Chi. We also wanted to know the conditions in North Korea and what more we could do to help.

"These people you see on the streets look calm and nothing seems wrong, but actually they are all under great pressure," Hsu Cheng-shan, an official in the foreign trade ministry, told us. "All of them are thinking about how to keep their families fed, how to make ends meet, and so on. Even in Pyongyang, most people only have two meals a day." Now I knew why they all looked so serious: a half-empty stomach cannot produce happiness.

Li Tzai-lin, an official from the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee, admitted, "Since 1994, my country has suffered many natural disasters, and we are now facing serious shortages of food." North Korea used to barter with other Communist countries for goods, but with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the North Korean economy was seriously affected.

The never-ending natural disasters that have ravaged the country since 1994 made the situation even worse. Agricultural output, originally eight million tons annually, was down to three million tons this year. Before 1994, every person could receive seven hundred grams [24.5 oz] of rice every day, but this year the ration was reduced to 300 grams [10.5 oz]. That proudly nationalistic North Korean officials would ask for help was a very serious indication of how bad the situation was, so we wanted to see the it for ourselves.

Gaunt shadows on barren land

The UN World Food Program, UNICEF and the European Union have discovered that due to the long-term food shortage, more than sixty percent of children under seven years old are growing slower than children in other nations.

In the city of Pyongsong, a one-hour drive from Pyongyang, we visited an orphanage that accepted children under five years old. Director Han Chin-shu said helplessly that before 1994, every child in the orphanage could receive 3,600 calories of food every day, but now they get less than half of that. More than one third of the children in the orphanage were suffering from malnutrition. This figure matches that discovered by the United Nations: more than one third of North Korean children one to two years old suffer from malnutrition. It is appalling to see so many of these innocent children in such misery.

We then went to a city hospital, where the conditions were not much better. In one ward, we saw eight children in very serious condition. The doctors told us the hospital could not even get any milk powder, and they also lacked the most basic glucose. They had to make it themselves.

Pyongsan is an industrialized city very close to the demilitarized zone. It took us just over an hour to drive the 120 kilometers [74 mi] from Pyongyang. When we got off the freeway, we turned onto a muddy road on which cars gave way to traditional oxcarts. We seemed to have traveled forty years back in time. Farm huts were scattered around, and the winter in this northern country was the dry, yellow color of mud. Except for the snow on the ground and a few people walking by the road, the land seemed dead.

An Jen-che, chairperson of the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee in Pyongsan, desperately hoped we could bring some substantial help to the city. "The city has 110,000 people, and 80,000 of them work in the marble or limestone quarries. But the constant rain has flooded the coal mines and has forced most factories to shut down because of the fuel shortage."

Sustaining their lives with pickles

An told us that workers only received nine months of food supplies last year. The city needs at least 30,000 tons of food to stay alive, but years of disasters have reduced the rice production to 9,000 tons. The food storage facility in the city has been empty since last October. By the end of October, they had to start using "substitute food" made of corn stems, grass, leaves and twenty percent rice. But when the winter came, they could not find any leaves at all, and could only use pickles that were processed before the winter. There was no rice at all.

The conditions at the hospital in Pyongsan were even worse than those we had seen before. It originally had five hundred beds, but floods had damaged much of the hospital and only around two hundred beds could be used. Furthermore, the hospital was short of medicine and doctors had to prescribe herbs. Due to eating the "substitute food" for a long time, many people in the area had developed diarrhea or stomachaches.

One patient suffering from serious malnutrition moaned with cold and hunger. The other patients around him were all gray, matching the color of the sky outdoors. One doctor told me about the terrible conditions of the hospital. "Malnutrition is everywhere. We usually have more than fifty patients suffering from malnutrition every month in the summer. During the freezing cold winter, we have fewer patients here because with the fuel shortage the hospital cannot provide heat."

Sinuiju is on the Yalu River, across from Dandong, China. Chongju, another city less than a thirty-minute drive from Sinuiju, was also heavily damaged. Flooding from the Yellow Sea broke through dikes in 1996. More than eight thousand hectares [almost 20,000 acres] of farmland are still under seawater today.

While we were heading to the area where the dikes broke, we came across a local market that was held every ten days. It seemed that all the farmers brought everything extra from their homes to sell so that they could purchase their necessities. Everything from a few eggs and a chicken to bags of maize, flour and rice were for sale. Furniture and shoes smuggled from China were also included. More people than goods were at the market.

The freezing wind from the Yellow Sea whipped around us as we stood on a dike. On the horizon was a long, black shadow—the original dike, said Chen Chih-shan, chairperson of the rescue committee in Chongju. Before us, ice floated on the sea. Actually, the salt water was covering good farmland. In the midst of the ice stood a farmhouse and a granary, indicating that this place was once a habitat for humans. Ms. Chen told us frankly that close to 80,000 residents in the town of 110,000 lived a terrible life. Each person could only receive a hundred grams [3.5 oz] of rice a day.

The Li family lived next to the dike. Their house was destroyed by floods, but was later rebuilt with the help of local residents. Mr. Li and his wife had gone to work, while his mother took care of two little grandchildren. Frail old Mrs. Li consoled herself that it was good that people could have at least a hundred grams of rice--one bowl--per day. Imagine how few calories that provides in freezing weather like this!

The World Food Program tried to rebuild the broken dike and reclaim the farmlands submerged under seawater with a project called, "Food for Work." Any worker who came to work on the project would receive two kilograms of rice a day, a light at the end of the tunnel for residents in the area.

The situation in North Korea did not happen all at once. According to outside estimates, one to three million people have died either directly or indirectly from continuous starvation. Long-term malnutrition has weakened their immune systems, so that even a simple cold or stomach flu is enough to kill them. Dr. Judith Katona-Apte, senior program advisor for the UN World Food Program, said, "Even in war-torn countries, starvation only happens in pockets here and there. It's hard to think of another country that's been so widely affected in this way."

We were also concerned whether the 700,000 articles of clothing that had arrived earlier could be distributed to the public. "The people of our country dislike jeans, because they are symbols of American imperialist corruption," government official Chin Cheng-chi informed us politely. "We also dislike wearing clothes made in South Korea. Furthermore, clothes that are too fancy or have too many pictures are not allowed in society." It would take at least a month for customs to examine every piece of clothing.

The coldest trip

All North Koreans blame the food shortages on the series of natural disasters that have happened since 1994. However, foreign researchers in North Korea deduced from medical records that the starvation actually started after the collapse of the Soviet Union. From then on, North Korea was not able to receive necessary food, fuel and fertilizer from the former Soviet Union. Judith Cheng-Hopkins, UN World Food Program regional director for Asia, pointed out, "The country has to come to grips with the fact that this is part of a structural problem and can't just be blamed on the weather anymore."

The unhappy little faces that I saw in the hospital still linger in my mind. I have been to places colder than North Korea, and I have been to poor, starving Ethiopia. However, I must admit that this is the first time I have been to a country suffering from such widespread starvation. I think that during this trip I experienced the coldest winter of my life. Like the North Koreans, I sincerely pray for the quick end of this long, cold winter and the speedy arrival of spring.