North Korea Famine

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, one of the most destructive of the last century. Analysts have estimated it killed three to five percent of the population.
The Stalinist state, which still relies on aid to feed millions of people, blames natural disasters for the famine, but observers say catastrophic economic mismanagement was also responsible.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) left North Korea at the end of 2005 after the country said it no longer needed emergency aid.
It has since agreed to allow the WFP back to oversee a scaled down programme, helping 1.9 million people. But the agency says millions will be left vulnerable to hunger.
China provides large amounts of aid directly. But unlike WFP food shipments, distribution is monitored only weakly, if at all. Critics say this is undermining efforts to improve transparency.
The South, which has also sent huge shipments directly, suspended regular aid deliveries after the North carried out missile tests in July 2006.
North Korea's announcement in October that it had carried out a nuclear test prompted international condemnation and U.N. sanctions, setting back the country's tentative steps to end its isolation.
In February 2007, Pyongyang agreed after further talks to take steps towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300 million in aid. But food shortages and human rights abuses still represesent a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions that has prompted tens of thousands to risk their lives trying to escape across the border into China.

soure:http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/KP_FAM.htm?v=at_a_glance