North Korea's Rising Waters

In a country as secretive as North Korea, even natural disasters are shrouded in mystery. With international aid groups struggling to determine the extent of damage caused by July's torrential rains and floods, Seoul-based NGO Good Friends last week reported that the disaster left more than 54,700 dead or missing and 2.5 million homeless?a startling contradiction of Pyongyang's claim that "hundreds" were dead. Good Friends also warned that large areas of farmland were washed out, raising the specter of another famine, reminiscent of the one that cost the lives of as many as 2 million North Koreans in the mid-1990s. "It...