Historically, North Korea has been suseptible to floods and even droughts, but the majority of the country of 23 million has entered into a new type of government induced famine.

The infamous North Korean famine of the 1990's was largely viewed by the western world as an unneeded death of approximately two million people.

As Philip Browning wrote in the International Herald Tribune, "This is not a normal famine in the sense that it is akin to the African tragedies of the past decade. North Korean famine has resulted primarily because the political leadership has far more important objectives than feeding its own people."

Indeed in the 1990's political turmoil involving the possibility of nuclear production in NN. Korea hindered the country's ability to trade with other countries to meet its needs, under its own secretive response to the outer world.

Under the present rule of Kim Jong Il, and North Korea's own Juche ideology of self-reliance; Kwon tae-jin, an expert at the S. Korean Rural Economy Institution said in April 2008, "If the S. Korean and global community fail to send food aid to the north, we might see a food crisis even worse than the one in the 1990's."

Once again the current North Korean famine is partially due to crop damage due to devastating floods in 2006 and 2007.

In July 2006 North Korea was hit by a massive storm thatleft 58,000 people dead and over a million people homeless.

In August 2007 the Arirang Mass games were cancelled in N. Korea after 300,000 were left homeless and 600 dies in another storm that submerged, buried or washed away 11% of the country's rice and corn; in a country that is only 18% arable in the first place.

After both floods South Korea gave unconditional aid to to it's northern neighbor, to the tune of $7.5 million in 2007. The average eight-year-old South Korean is seven inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than their northern counterparts. The N. Korean domestic gross product is $20.9 billion to $1.196 trillion GDP for S. Korea.

Donations from China to North Korea have fallen as of late from 440,000 metric tons of food aid in 2005 to 207,000 metric tons in 2006. China does provide 90% of N. Korea's oil imports at friendly prices.

By 1997 N. Korea was also receieving assistnce from the U.S. to the tune of $700,000 tons per year. Under the Bush administration assistance has decreased.

On April 3, 2008 N. Korea asked China to provide

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