A World Food Program official confirmed Tuesday that the worsening food situation in North Korea may be in part caused by Japan's discontinuance of aiding food to the North, despite the normalization talks between the two countries. Christien Bertium, a WFP official in Geneva, said Japan has not provided the WFP office with any food supplies or funds although it had notified that it may resume the food aid to the North even before the talks of diplomatic normalization. Bertium said an additional 43 million dollars worth of funds must be secured in order to ward off any emergency situation in the North. He added that the discontinuance of the food supplies to the North by the WFP is the first of its kind since the organization started supplying food to the North since 1995.