Mick Hartley

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the gold-plated statues of Kim Il-Song:

North Korea is facing a humanitarian crisis caused by acute food shortages, a UN agency has warned.

The situation there was “clearly bad and getting worse”, a senior World Food Programme official said, and help was needed to avert serious tragedy.

North Korea has been dependent on international food aid for years.

But severe flooding last year compounded its problems, devastating large swathes of agricultural land and leading to a poor harvest.

WFP estimates that 6.5 million North Koreans, out of a total population of 23 million, do not have enough to eat – and that this figure could rise. […]

The communist nation has experienced famine in the past.

Up to two million people are believed to have died in the mid to late 1990s due to shortages caused by flooding and drought.