The United States will continue to offer food aid to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday.

A U.S. team has recently traveled to the DPRK to assess situation there, said the spokesman, adding that the United States will soon send 21,000 metric tons (about 23,100 tons) of food to the impoverished country.

Reports here said earlier this week that the DPRK's 23 million people are going to urgently need food assistance over the next several months due to chronic shortages.

The DPRK's total grain production this year is estimated at 4.31 million metric tons (about 4.74 million tons), while food experts estimate the country needs at least 5.4 million metric tons (about 6 million tons) a year.

The United States announced in this May resumption for the first time in three years of food aid to the DPRK, which was believed to be facing famine. The Americans had offered food aid from 1995 to 2005, when it was suspended after Pyongyang expelled representatives of the World Food Program.

The Bush administration, who claimed that the resumption of food aid was unrelated to the nuclear disarmament process in the Korean Peninsula, has decided to suspend fuel shipments to the DPRK.

"Future fuel shipments will not go forward absent a verification regime," said McCormack on Dec. 12, hours after the latest international effort failed to hammer out the verification protocol of the DPRK's nuclear facilities due to Pyongyang's rejection.

The six parties, namely the DPRK, the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Russia and China, ended their third meeting in Beijing during the sixth round of talks without substantial progress on how to verify the DPRK nuclear facilities.

(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2008)