Our ABC was at it again the other night, when it decided to put its size 15 boot into North Korea, courtesy of an emotial but fact poor diatribe by its North Asia correspondent, Mark Willacy, called North Korean children begging, army starving.

The ABC report falsely claimed that "Footage shot inside North Korea and obtained by the ABC has revealed the extent of chronic food shortages and malnutrition inside the secretive state." Through the entire article, there is not a single statistic quoted in support of the assertions made.

Allegedly "Shot over several months by an undercover North Korean journalist, the harrowing footage shows images of filthy, homeless and orphaned children begging for food and soldiers demanding bribes."

I'd suggest that Mark Wallacy needs to travel a bit more.

If he is so concerned about the incidence of starving children, why is his report solely focused on North Korea?

As any reasonably informed person knows, child starvation is a social disease within every society, including those morally hypocritical states such as the US & Australia, who are always ready to sledge those less fortunate, whilst ignoring or excusing our own failures.

For the benefit of Mark Willacy & "our ABC":

• In the Asian, African & Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"
• Every year 15 million children die of hunger
• For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years
• Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness & starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!
• The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've commenced reading this piece, at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.
• One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food & Agriculture
• The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa & the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, & the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America & other parts of the world although, let's not forget that one in five American children lives in poverty & one in four American child is on food stamps. More than 16.7 million American children live in households that struggle to put food on the table.
• Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF
• 3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
• In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
• In the U.S. hunger & race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, & 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
• The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The US ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
• One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the US goes to bed hungry every night.
• Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia & one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
• In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
• Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
• About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
• To satisfy the world's sanitation & food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States & the European Union spend on perfume each year.
• The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
• Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
• It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger & malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

So Mark, when you & "Auntie" next decide to get on your high horse & beat-up on North Korea or some other out of favour third world country, how about showing your audience a little respect by addressing the issue on a slightly more balanced basis?