International Relations Commons^™

Famine In North Korea Redux?, Marcus Noland, Stephan Haggard

Marcus Noland

In the 1990s, 600,000 to 1 million North Koreans, or about 3–5 percent of the pre-crisis population perished in one of the worst famines of the 20th century. North Korea is once again poised on the brink of famine. Although the renewed provision of aid is likely to avert a disaster on the scale of the 1990s, hunger-related deaths are already occurring and a dynamic has been set in motion that will carry the crisis into the future. North Korea is a complex humanitarian emergency characterized by highly imperfect information. This paper triangulates quantity and price evidence with direct observation …