North Korea food crisis.

Food prices in North Korea are climbing sharply higher and contributing to a looming food disaster, says a June 13, 2005 BBC News summary of the worsening situation. The situation has deteriorated to the point where aid workers are predicting famine.

Hardest hit consumers are urban residents who do not have the means to augment their food supplies as do rural inhabitants. The country's rural population - 40 percent of the country's populace - have access to land they can use to try to grow food for themselves, and are skillful at finding wild food.

The central cause of the problem is political. Donations of food to North Korea have stopped because of the country's unwillingness to negotiate the future of its nuclear weapons program.

Part of the problem, too, is that North Korea has only 18 percent arable land, and is heavily dependent on expensive fertilizers and equipment to make that land productive. North Korea is somewhat smaller than Greece, which has a similar mountainous terrain, but North Korea has twice as many mouths to feed.

The price problem is due to the government's economic reforms. The BBC says that only the elite, government officials, high ranking military officers, and officials of state-owned enterprises have anything like a balanced diet.

Urban families are dependent on government handouts of cereal. Individuals are guaranteed about 280 grams per day. The international standard for a balanced diet of food is 550-590 grams per day. The government has reduced the guarantee to 250 grams per day, and has told aid workers that it is likely to drop to 200 grams per day. The only food an urban family can afford is maize, about 4 kilograms per month.