The International Federation of Red Cross and the Red Crescent Societies launched an emergency appeal Monday for $4.5 million to provide urgently needed supplies of food and other relief to 30,000 North Koreans made homeless or badly affected by storms that have swept across the impoverished country.

A Red Cross press release said that assessments carried out by the North's Red Cross and the IFRC found that in some areas of South Hwanghae Province, 50 percent of homes had been destroyed and 90 percent had been damaged.

Igor Dmitryuk, head of the IFRC delegation in Pyongyang, said if no rapid action is taken, many people may have to spend the winter under plastic sheeting. Winter temperatures in North Korea often drop as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.