please see the attached file.

The North Korean famine occurred during the mid 1990s in North Korea and lasted until about 2001 when the country had mostly recovered from the Arduous March but it was not until 2004 that North Korea finally announced that it would need no further assistance from foreign aid suppliers. This autarkic urban, industrial society had achieved food self-sufficiency in prior decades through a massive industrialization of agriculture. The economic system relied on "friendship prices" trade with the Soviet Union.

The famine killed an unknown number of people. No official numbers has been released. Although sometimes the figure is said to be as high as 3 million or 10% of North Korea's population, this figure is considered problematic because it is based on the experience of North Koreans in the province of North Hamgyŏng.

Background: Environmental, Economic, Social and Political factors behind the Famine and Food Crisis

The food shortages in North Korea have many causes including:
- constraints within the country's economic system
- the collapse of strategic economic ties on which the economy depended following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the decline in trade with China following its normalization of relations with South Korea
- natural disasters

Constraints within North Korea's economic system

The food shortages in North Korea are partly a product of natural constraints and structural weaknesses. Limited arable land, relatively poor soil fertility and harsh climatic conditions restrict the capacity of the domestic agricultural sector to provide food security for the population. North Korean agriculture has also been built on the exploitation of land unsuited for agriculture, and energy-intensive forms of cultivation. Electricity was used extensively to power water pumps for irrigation and drainage. Tractors, and chemical fertilizers, particularly petroleum-based urea and ammonium sulphate, were heavily utilized.

The collapse of strategic economic ties with the former Soviet Union

The roots of the famine lay in a significant reduction in trade with the former Soviet Union and China in the early 1990s, which meant sharp cuts in heavily subsidised food, crude oil and equipment supplies to North Korea.
Natural disasters

Natural disasters such as floods in the mid-1990s and droughts in 2000 and 2001 contributed to the collapse of the industrialised agriculture system in North Korea.
Heavy rains between June and August 1995 resulted in devastating floods.
Social Causes: Human Rights Abuses which Contributed to the Famine and Food Crisis
- Discrimination and unequal access to food
The impact of food shortages on the North Korean population is uneven. The urban population, with the exception of residents of the capital city Pyongyang, are reportedly more vulnerable and dependent on the PDS than rural dwellers.
- Restrictions on freedom of movement
The North Korean famine and food crisis have been largely invisible because of political controls, including restrictions on the movement of both North Koreans and staff of international humanitarian agencies and the near-total suppression of freedom of expression, information and association.
- Undue restrictions on relief agencies
- Suppression of freedom of expression and association
North Koreans suffer near total suppression of their rights to freedom of expression, association and information.

The chronology and extent of the famine in North Korea

Signs of serious food shortages became evident to the outside world in 1991, when the North Korean government launched a "let's eat two meals a day" campaign.
Reliable figures on North Korea are difficult to obtain, given the lack of access and barriers to information gathering. Estimates of the number of deaths that resulted from the 1990s famine vary widely, ranging from 220,000 to 3.5 million. Some sources claim the famine destroyed between 12 and 15 percent of the total population. However the "social damage was much higher if one considers the fall-off in the fertility curve caused by famine.

The impact of famine and food crisis on children

The lack of access to food has had the greatest impact on children. Between 1993 and 1997, infant mortality in North Korea reportedly increased from 45 per thousand in 1990 to 58 per thousand in 1999. Over 60 per cent of North Korean children under the age of five suffer from acute respiratory infections and over 20 percent from diarrhoea. The rate of death from these diseases reached almost 80 percent. Some 40-50 percent of children visiting clinics were suffering from diseases caused by contaminated water, and during the monsoon season the rate shot up to 60-70 per cent.

The impact of long-term food deprivation is visible everywhere. Food shortages and adult deaths have had a severe impact on children. Unconfirmed reports suggest that hundreds of orphans have been placed in institutions or have become street children without access to food aid and state protection.
The acute food shortages in North Korea have forced tens of thousands of people to cross the border "illegally" into China's north-eastern provinces.

Aids for the famine

In 1995, responding to the North Korean flood that caused the famine, the United States government initially provided over $8 million in general humanitarian assistance (China was the only country to initially contribute more aid). However, eight years later, the United States government had provided $644 million in aid to the country which comprised nearly 50% of the aid going to North Korea.
As late as 2000, there were frequent reports from reliable sources (such as the UN) of famine in all parts of North Korea except Pyongyang. North Korean citizens ran increasingly desperate risks to escape from the country, mainly into China.
North Korea has not yet resumed its food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered. (Woo-Cummings, 2002)
In the spring of 2005, the World Food Program reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea, and the government was reported to have mobilized millions of city-dwellers to help rice farmers.

However, the North Korean government stated that the 2005 cereal harvest reached 4.6 million tonnes (a 10% increase in comparison with 2004), the best harvest in the past ten years.

In the last, I would like to finish off with the statement:
"Persistent hunger in today's world is neither inevitable nor acceptable. Hunger is not a question of fate; it is manmade. It is the result either of inaction, or of negative actions that violate the right to food. It is therefore time to take action."