OHIO CONGRESSMAN SAYS NORTH KOREANS STARVING.

Byline: Michael Zielenziger Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Should the world allow North Koreans to starve because their Stalinist government denies them freedom?

An Ohio congressman who just returned from North Korea posed that stark moral dilemma Tuesday after a four-day visit.

``North Korea is facing a disaster of gigantic proportions,'' warned Rep. Tony P. Hall, D-Ohio, who said he was permitted to make unscheduled visits to rural villages and health clinics in the country's northwest.

He said he saw emaciated women reduced to using dried, year-old cabbage leaves to make soup; children whose growth was so stunted by starvation that a 14-year-old girl looked only 7; women scrounging for weed or grass or ``anything that looks edible''; food distribution centers with bare shelves; an 800-bed hospital so cold that sick patients could see their own breath; and whole regions devoid of trees because they have been cut down for firewood.

``I saw enough to confirm that North Korea is rapidly descending into a hell of a severe famine,'' said Hall, who was accompanied by epidemiologist Brent Burkholder, a Korean-speaking physician from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ``Many people we met said this was the worst they had ever encountered since the Korean War. . . . Most didn't have anything to eat and didn't know where their next meal would come from.''

But just hours after Hall briefed reporters on his North Korean pilgrimage, Defense Secretary William Cohen said the United States has not received ``reliable'' indications that the famine in North Korea demands new relief efforts.

``We can't say with any degree of accuracy how significant the shortages are,'' Cohen said in Tokyo as he prepared to meet with Japanese defense officials. While he indicated that the United States would like to alleviate suffering, he noted that ``it is not our policy to feed fat generals.''

``The question has occurred as to whether there are such mass shortages that there is the threat of mass starvation,'' Cohen said. ``To the extent that such a situation exists, the U.S., I believe, has indicated a willingness to help to some measure.'' But he added: ``I don't think any country wants to be under the demand that you will feed us or else. And the U.S. is not operating on that basis.''

In Washington, meanwhile, the State Department said Tuesday that it was ``seriously reviewing'' a U.N. appeal to send more food aid to North Korea and that Pyongyang had agreed to hold a second round of talks on its foreign missile sales ``very soon.''

Despite an abundance of evidence that a desperate famine is developing, political concerns have prevented the world from responding before a Rwanda-like tragedy ensues. Last month, the head of the U.N. World Food Program, Catherine Bertini, said North Korea needed an extra 1 million tons of rice to prevent widespread famine and said rations have been reduced to 100 grams of food a day per person, about half a bowl of rice. And on Tuesday, the U.N.'s relief program for children, UNICEF, reported that Pyongyang said 134 North Korean children had died of starvation.

Although religious and civic groups in South Korea plan to raise $20 million to ship 110,000 tons of corn to the north, their government in Seoul has maintained that it will not aid the north until Pyongyang agrees to begin talks to formally end the Korean conflict, which was halted by a cease-fire, not by a peace treaty, in 1953. Japan, which has storehouses full of rice, also won't help, because of reports that North Korean operatives kidnapped some Japanese citizens.

Some U.S. officials and analysts fear that feeding starving citizens would only prolong the regime of Stalinist leader Kim Jung Il, who controls a million-man army.