North Korea (DPRK)

Lingering flood damage, high commodity prices and political wrangling with the South could push impoverished North Korea this year into one of its worst food shortages since a famine in the 1990s, experts said. Pyongyang’s leaders would try to keep any crisis on its farms from spilling over into international nuclear disarmament talks, they added. North Korea, which even with a good harvest still falls about 1 million tons, or around 20 percent, short of the food needed to feed its own people, relies heavily on aid from China, South Korea and UN aid agencies to make up the gap. (Reuters)