Wednesday, January 1, 2003. Posted: 13:07:27 (AEDT)

Many North Koreans will spend winter in air-raid shelters to protect themselves from a menace as deadly as a US bomber assault - the freezing cold.

With Siberian winds pushing temperatures to lows of minus 30 degrees Celsius they have no choice, according to RENK (Rescue The North Korean People), a group that assists North Korean refugees.

"As most people don't have heating at their homes, they would die living in there," Lee Young-Hwa said, a Japan-based representative of the organisation.

Winter has been a fearful experience for North Koreans for years but indications are it will be even worse this time around, with fuel and food aid declining.

The United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union have decided to suspend badly needed oil shipments to the North as punishment for its nuclear weapons program.

This has worsened an energy shortage already so desperate that many hospitals in North Korea operate with virtually no heating, according to foreign sources inside the reclusive country.

"Some rooms may be heated in hospitals, but in general there's a huge lack of energy, and as a result, a lack of in-patients," P G Jensen said, the Norwegian head of delegation at the local Red Cross.

For those patients too ill to go home, the odds have worsened drastically, as they are forced to stay in unheated or scarcely heated hospital wards.

"Serious patients, like those who've undergone surgery, may have complications, and their recovery may be delayed," a North Korean staff member of the World Health Organization (WHO) said, who declined to give his name.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2003