A statistical comparison of the peak flux in electron and ion polar cusp precipitation in the summer and winter hemispheres as observed by the low-altitude DMSP F7 satellite is performed. Data studied encompass four consecutive solstices from December 1983 to June 1985, comprising 77 days of data with a total of 292 individual cusp passes. On each day, observations were restricted to those few hours UT in which the interhemispherical MLT variation of DMSP F7 was smallest. After the remaining local time effect was averaged out, the summer hemisphere ion (electron) precipitating energy flux was larger, on the average, by 61¿11% (51¿5%) than that in the winter hemisphere. However, the average particle energy was always lower for both species in the summer hemisphere. These effects generally hold true for northward as well as southward interplanetary magnetic fields (IMF). It is argued that the observed asymmetry is very hard to explain if the most intense part of the cusp lies on closed field lines, but it is shown that the standard open field line model of the cusp virtually requires the observed differences to occur. The present results thus suggest that the most intense portion of the cusp lies on open field lines even for northward IMF. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1988