Malnutrition is widespread in North Korea © CAFOD

North Korea is not only the poorest country in North Asia, but lacks even the foreign currency necessary to create food security for its people. In average harvests, production of rice and maize is thought to fall short of basic needs by 15%-20%. Harvest failures in the mid-1990s led to a full scale famine in which up to 2 million people died, often described as the worst global humanitarian disaster of that decade.

The traditional sources of food aid have been South Korea, China and the World Food Programme (WFP), their distribution networks often hampered by fickle and opaque government regulations. For a period during 2005/06, North Korea refused all food and fertiliser aid, in deference to the dogma of self-reliance and in denial of a WFP nutritional survey conducted in October 2004 which found that 37% of children suffered stunted growth whilst a third of all mothers were malnourished and anaemic.

In 2007 WFP reported that "having enough to eat is still a daily struggle for one-third to one-half of all North Koreans". Most people are dependent on the government's Public Distribution System, a notoriously inefficient programme which is supposed to ensure fairness through defined rations but which instead tends to favour elitist groups at the expense of others. The rations themselves typically fall far below the recommended daily calorific intake. In cities people may be able to buy extra food whilst those in the country may enjoy the luxury of a smallholding. Reports of people foraging for wild plants or selling their last possessions for food continue to filter out of the country.

Food stocks in North Korea are at their lowest in the months leading up to harvest in September. Severe floods in 2007 destroyed an estimated 16% of the harvest boosting the need for aid from 1.0 to 1.4 million tons. Given the uncertainty of the acute international political tension over North Korea's nuclear programmes, there is concern amongst development agencies that 2008 will be a particularly difficult year.

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