North Korea has spent more than five decades cut off from the world. It is so secretive that no one knows how many people died in its famine of the 1990s, although analysts have estimated it killed 3-5 percent of the population. Now it faces another humanitarian crisis after a poor harvest that has caused food prices to skyrocket.

Up to 6 million in need of help

Hit by floods and rising prices

Relies heavily on international aid

The Stalinist state has in recent years depended on aid from China, South Korea and United Nations agencies to feed millions of people. It blames natural disasters for its hunger woes but observers say catastrophic economic mismanagement is also responsible.

Agricultural experts warn that North Korea faces its worst food shortfalls since the 1990s famine with high grain prices, flood damage from 2007 and political wrangling with South Korea taking their toll.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has estimated up to 6 million people need help.

In mid-2008, the United States began its first bilateral assistance to North Korea in eight years after Pyongyang agreed to relax restrictions on aid agencies' ability to monitor distribution. Delivery of the aid will be overseen by the WFP and five aid agencies.

South Korea has traditionally provided major food aid to the North. But the flow stopped when President Lee Myung-bak took office in early 2008. He says aid should be dependent on how well the North abides by an international nuclear deal.

Food shortages and human rights abuses have prompted tens of thousands to risk their lives trying to escape across the border into China.

KEY FACTS

Total population	23.9 million (Source: U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2006)
Famine death estimates	220,000 (Source: Democratic People's Republic of Korea's government, DPRK) 2.5 million (Andrew Natsios, former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development) 600,000 - 1 million (Marcus Noland, Institute for International Economics) No estimate ever given by World Food Programme (WFP)
Chronic malnutrition under six years old	37 percent (DPRK/UNICEF/WFP, 2004)
Grain deficit	1.4 million tonnes (Source: Korea Rural Economic Institute, 2007)
Total targeted by WFP country operation	1.9 million people (Source: WFP)
Total targeted by WFP flood response in 2007	215,000 people (Source: WFP)
WFP donors for North Korea	United States, Japan, South Korea, European Union, Australia, Italy, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Ireland and Norway.
North Korea's military spending	15.9 percent of budget (Finance Minister, 2005)

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It is the world's most secretive country, its "Eternal President" has been dead for more than a decade, it spends massive sums on its military, yet it cannot feed its own people. This is North Korea.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the country is facing a humanitarian crisis with up to 6 million people needing help.

Aid agencies say the food shortages are similar to a decade ago when North Korea suffered one of the most destructive famines of the 20th century. No one knows how many people died but estimates range from 600,000 and 2 million people.

The shortages have been caused by years of economic mismanagement in the reclusive Stalinist state, combined with natural disasters. Political wrangles with key food aid donor South Korea have exacerbated the North's problems.

In 2007, torrential rains triggered some of the worst flooding in decades, ravaging farmland, destroying tens of thousands of homes and damaging roads. The flooding resulted in a poor harvest that has caused food prices to rocket and supplies to dwindle. The United Nations launched an appeal for almost $15 million following the floods.

The world has committed billions of dollars in food aid over the past decade, but comprehensive aid programmes have been hampered by government obstruction and international fears over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

A critical issue is the restrictions the North places on aid workers' ability to check where the food ends up. WFP donors say monitoring is vital to ensure that aid is not diverted to the military or the ruling party which has been accused of appalling human rights abuses.

Aside from international aid channelled via the WFP, North Korea has also relied heavily on bilateral aid from China and South Korea, which do not insist on monitoring.

But the South turned off the tap in 2008 with a new government saying its future generosity would depend on Pyongyang's progress in abiding by an international nuclear pact and other political issues.

In 2008, the United States pledged to give 500,000 tonnes of food aid to North Korea - its first bilateral assistance in eight years. Distribution began in July after North Korea agreed to relax restrictions on aid agencies' ability to monitor deliveries in an unprecedented deal. See AlertNet's report Hungry North Korea opens doors to aid workers.

Things have not run entirely smoothly for the WFP since it launched emergency famine response operations in the mid-1990s.

The agency actually shut up shop in late 2005 after Pyongyang said it no longer needed emergency aid and wanted the organisation to switch to longer term development. In reality, the U.N. body was unhappy about proposed restrictions on its operations including its scope for monitoring distribution.

Aside from delivering food, the WFP had set up 19 factories producing fortified foods and started food-for-work programmes to improve North Korea's ability to feed itself. These had included flood control projects, irrigation systems, land reclamation and reforestation.

In June 2006, the two sides agreed on a scaled back programme with the WFP providing aid to 1.9 million people - down from the 6 million it had been helping in previous years.

Aid operations have been further hampered by a bitter row over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, which prompted the United States to brand it part of an "axis of evil".

South Korea temporarily suspended regular aid in 2006 after Pyongyang test-fired seven missiles in July. The same month the country was again hit by major storms that led to flooding that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands.

In October, North Korea announced it had carried out an underground nuclear test, prompting condemnation around the world. The U.N. Security Council promptly passed sanctions.

International funding for food aid dropped almost immediately, even though the sanctions excluded humanitarian relief. Analysts and aid workers began warning that the country was slipping back into a famine.

The reduced WFP programme, focusing on children and pregnant and nursing women, found itself critically underfunded, able to feed only 700,000 of the targeted 1.9 million.

Six-nation talks in early 2007 yielded an agreement from Pyongyang to take steps towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300 million in aid. The deal offered North Korea economic and energy aid if it declared all its nuclear programmes and disabled nuclear facilities.

Seoul announced it planned to resume fertiliser shipments to the North in time for spring sowing. In September 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush also authorised $25 million of the promised energy aid as a reward for North Korea's moves towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

Following the 2007 summer floods, WPF launched an emergency food distribution, targeting some 215,000 affected people. It continues to stress that long-term foreign aid is required.

China and South Korea have given hefty amounts of grain and fertiliser directly to North Korea over the years, but critics say the negligable monitoring is undermining efforts to improve transparency.

In 2008, South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, warned Pyongyang that if it wanted more aid it must improve human rights, abide by an international nuclear deal and start returning Southerners kidnapped or held since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Some North Korea watchers have queried whether the world should be giving aid at all if it means extending the life of a despotic regime and whether aid is just prolonging the very policies that led to famine in the first place.

"We have to pose the question whether through giving humanitarian aid we are at the same time reinforcing perhaps the worst political regime on the planet...," former Czech President Vaclav Havel said in the introduction to Hunger and Human Rights, The Politics of Famine in North Korea, a 2005 report by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

Defectors have told horrific stories of human rights violations. These include labour camps for anyone who falls foul of the system. Refugees have described forms of torture, public executions, forced abortions and campaigns to kill disabled babies. Former prisoners have told how they survived by catching and eating rats.

In 2005, 1,387 North Koreans made their way to the South, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. The figure in 2004 was 1,894. Almost all come through China.

Estimates of the number of North Koreans in China range from 30,000 to 300,000. China, which fears instability if large numbers flood across the 1,400km (850-mile) border, has been criticised for deporting migrants back to North Korea.

Although many of those fleeing are economic migrants, the United Nations says the persecution they are likely to face if they return means they merit protection under international law.

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, once described Kim Jong-il as a tyrannical dictator who lived like royalty while jailing hundreds of thousands and keeping many hungry in a "hellish nightmare".

North Korea calls itself a people's paradise and says criticism of its human rights is motivated by those wanting to topple Kim's leadership.

The worst of the famine was a decade ago, yet North Korea still relies heavily on outside assistance to feed its people. So how did the country end up in this mess?

Pyongyang points the finger at a series of natural catastrophes but this is not the whole story.

After World War Two the Korean peninsula split in two. The U.S.-backed Republic of Korea proclaimed sovereignty in the South and the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) did the same in the North.

The North invaded the South in 1950 hoping to unify the peninsula. The conflict ended with an armistice in 1953. Since then South Korea has grown into one of Asia's most affluent countries, while the North has slid into poverty.

The man who shaped North Korea was its founding father Kim Il-sung who introduced a philosophy of juche, or self-reliance. But this strategy has caused major problems given that only 18 percent of the land is arable and the climate is less than favourable.

Despite its commitment to self-sufficiency, North Korea actually relied heavily on its socialist allies for products including fertiliser and insecticides. With the collapse of the Soviet Union it found itself in dire straits.

Although China continued to supply petroleum and food, this was no match for the help once received from the Soviet Union. And China itself was changing and increasingly wanted hard currency for its exports.

Food is distributed through two channels in North Korea. Farm workers get an annual grain allowance while the bulk of the population receives regular rations through the public distribution system (PDS). As outside assistance fell, so did the rations. In 1991, the government initiated a "Let's eat two meals a day" campaign.

Kim Il-sung died in 1994 and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il. The succession marked the only time in history that rule of a communist state has passed from a father to a son. However, Kim Il-sung has been declared the country's "Eternal President".

Death rates in North Korea were rising by 1994, if not earlier, according to the Hunger and Human Rights report.

By the spring of 1995 the situation had grown desperate enough for Pyongyang to ask Japan and South Korea for emergency assistance. But things were about to get worse.

In the summer the country was hit by floods. The effects were exacerbated by soil erosion and river silting caused by previous deforestation that was the result of North Korea's efforts to increase cultivation. There were more floods in 1996 followed by a series of weather-related difficulties.

But as aid began arriving in North Korea, the country took the curious step of reducing its commercial imports, diverting the money it saved to other priorities including the military, according to the Hunger and Human Rights report.

In 1999, at the same time as it was cutting grain imports, it spent scarce foreign exchange on 40 MiG-21 fighters and eight military helicopters from Kazakhstan, the report's authors say.

"Times would have been tough under almost any policy, but a famine killing 3-5 percent of the population was not pre-ordained," they say.

1945 - Independence from Japan

1948 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) formally established

1950 - North Korea invades South Korea

1953 - Korean war ends in an armistice

1987 - Government food rations reduced following first cut in Soviet assistance

1991 - DPRK initiates a "Let's eat two meals a day" campaign

1994 - Kim Il-sung dies. Mortality rates are on the rise. Severe hailstorms

1995 - As food shortages worsen the DPRK asks for help from Japan and South Korea. First shipment leaves for DPRK in June

1995 - WFP begins operations in North Korea

Jul-Aug - Severe floods. DPRK says a fifth of the population is affected

Oct - DPRK signs a framework agreement with the U.S. to freeze its nuclear programme in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors

1996 - More severe floods. Some 16 percent of arable land is destroyed in 1995/1996

1997 - Drought hits fertile west coast June to August

1998 - Kim Il-sung declared Eternal President

Aug - U.S. congressional team says famine has killed 300,000 to 800,000 people a year in past three years. U.N. food brought in to help famine victims

1998 - Kim Jong-il named head of state

2000 - The leaders of North and South Korea meet for first time in Pyongyang

2000 - Drought and serious tropical storms strike

2001 - North Korea says it's grappling with worst spring drought in its history

2002 - Piecemeal economic reforms. Unemployment rises, as do prices of staple foods

2003

Jan - North Korea withdraws from Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty aimed at preventing spread of atomic weapons. American officials say North Korea has told U.S. it has nuclear weapons and might test them or transfer them to other countries

2004 - DPRK cereal rations are 200-250g - half the recommended amount

2005

Aug - DPRK asks WFP to switch from humanitarian assistance to long-term development programmes

Sep - DPRK signs agreement to scrap its nuclear programmes in exchange for aid, security assurances and greater diplomatic recognition

Oct - Cereal rations raised to 500g

Nov - 19 food factories established by WFP are closed down

Dec - WFP pulls out amid disagreements over the monitoring of future aid

2006

May - WFP signs agreement with DPRK, paving the way for a reduced $102 million, two-year plan to help 1.9 million people

Jul - DPRK defies international warnings and test-fires seven missiles. The country is hit by major storms, causing floods that kill hundreds and displace tens of thousands

Aug - DPRK initially turns down offers of aid, but later accepts humanitarian assistance from South Korean Red Cross and WFP. The South Korean government suspends regular rice aid in protest at the missile tests

Oct 9 - North Korea says it has carried out a nuclear test, prompting condemnation from around the world, including key aid supplier China

Oct 14 - U.N. Security Council votes unanimously in favour of imposing sanctions in response to the nuclear test. International funding for relief programmes drops sharply, despite the fact the sanctions exclude humanitarian aid

Nov - Analysts and aid workers warn that North Korea is slipping back into a famine that could trigger a mass refugee exodus

Dec - U.N. agencies issue dire warnings for North Korea. They report that summer floods decimated domestic food production, placing an already vulnerable population at risk of rising malnutrition during the harsh winter months

2007

Feb - Six-nation talks in Beijing yield an agreement from Pyongyang to take steps towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300 million in energy aid

Mar - Seoul announces it plans to resume fertiliser shipments to North in time for spring sowing

North Korea admits to food shortages of a million tonnes. WFP warns millions are vulnerable to hunger in the absence of better donor support

Aug - The U.N. appeals for $15 million to deal with the aftermath of severe flooding, which it says killed more than 450 people and affected over 960,000

Oct - Leaders of the two Koreas hold second summit ever. They agree to seek talks with China and U.S. for a peace treaty

Nov - Prime ministers from both Koreas meet for first time in 15 years to discuss details of massive aid package to help rebuild impoverished North's infrastructure

Dec - The two Koreas start their first regular train service since the 1950-1953 war

2008

Early 2008 - New South Korean government ties further aid to Pyongyang's progress in nuclear disarmament

May - U.S. announces 500,000 tonnes of food aid

Jul - WFP expands operations. WFP and five aid agencies start overseeing delivery of U.S. aid after North Korea eases restrictions on their ability to monitor distribution

North Korea is the world's most secretive country. For a decade the World Food Programme has acted as a rare window on the outside world. Its website has information on its projects. Perhaps surprisingly, a few aid agencies do run lowkey programmes in North Korea. They include: Mercy Corps, "a href="http://www.wvasiapacific.org/" target="new">World Vision, Samaritan's Purse, Global Resource Services and Christian Friends of Korea.

For a comprehensive overview of the reasons behind the 1990s famine have a look at Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. It's very readable and contains the sort of critical analysis it would be impossible for anyone operating in North Korea to make without getting kicked out.

There are plenty of statistics and useful graphs. It also has a report on North Korea's secret prison camps, The Hidden Gulag.

Famine and Reform in North Korea, a 2003 report by Marcus Noland of the Institute for International Economics, contains much the same information as Hunger and Human Rights (which he co-wrote) but it is useful for an in depth analysis of the different death toll estimates. It also has a run down of non-governmental organisations that have pulled out of North Korea.

Thousands have fled hunger and oppression in North Korea via China. The unlucky ones get deported back across the border. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is concerned that they face persecution on their return. UNHCR officials have been barred from the border areas in recent years. For information see the North Korean section of the UNHCR website. Writenet, a human rights and forced migration network, has written this slightly dry 2005 report on North Korean migration to China. It also addresses the famine and details the risks North Koreans face in crossing the border.

The UNHCR website Refworld has a useful list of reports on human rights in North Korea. Human Rights Watch also has good background material.

Finally, there is North Korea's state-run news agency KCNA. It doesn't contain a lot of news as most people would understand the term, but it gives an insight into the mentality of the leadership.

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