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SEOUL, May 6 (UPI) -- North Korea has been offering gift bags of candy and cookies to students at Mansudae Children's Palace ahead of the Seventh Party Congress, more than two weeks after similar products were issued on Kim Il Sung's birthday. North Korean students at the educational center told Hong Kong's Phoenix TV that Kim Jong Un had presented the sweets as gifts.
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A North Korean schoolgirl who was studying the arts at Mansudae said she had "received high-quality cookies and sweets."
Another student said they received a gift of "sweets and cookies that we students like."
North Korea has been allowing limited access to its population to foreign reporters in the country who are in Pyongyang to cover the Seventh Party Congress.
North Korea has also presented other special incentives but they have been limited to the residents of Pyongyang. Many other areas of the country face food shortages.
The presents include five days' worth of rice, two bottles of liquor, 2 pounds of meat, sweets and cookies, as well as a bottle of cooking oil, according to reports.
The sweets that were on offer on April 15, the founder's birthday, were made with corn because flour and sugar are being taken out of the factories to be resold in exchange for much needed currency.
The state-issued confections were reportedly of such poor quality an excess supply of the corn-based sweets was being sold in the country's unofficial markets, sources have said.
Kim Jong Un presented the gifts to the students to congratulate them on a new school term, Phoenix TV reported.
But Pyongyang's treatment of its overall population, especially its children, came under criticism Thursday from South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Park said North Korea ought to "abandon its nuclear weapons programs and take care of its people and children," after watching a Russian documentary about the management of children's lives in North Korea.
Yonhap reported 50 people, including defectors watched the film with Park in Seoul.
