The World Food Program (WFP) says it has offered to provide North Korea emergency food aid that would feed around 500-thousand people for a month.

A spokesman for the U.N. food agency, Paul Risley, told ABC and AFP that the WFP is currently awaiting Pyongyang’s response on the proposal that was made in the wake of heaving flooding in the North.

Risley said if the North accepts the offer, the WFP will immediately launch an international appeal for funds to avoid having to cut back on its existing program.

The U.N. agency currently feeds 750-thousand people, mainly children and pregnant or nursing women, and plans to expand the number of aid recipients to one-point-nine million by next month.

Earlier on Thursday, Risley told Radio Free Asia that last week’s devastating flood is estimated to have affected 200- to-300-thousand people, calling the flooding situation a possible significant emergency.

Risley said a WFP staffer and other U.N. officials traveled Wednesday to parts of a North Korean province that was hit hard by the flood and confirmed the dire need for food and medical supplies.

However, some experts on the communist state say the North may have exaggerated damage to secure aid, citing that Pyongyang has a history of overstating the effects of disasters to get aid.