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Seoul, Korea - North Korea has resumed state rations which were suspended because of a severe food shortage after China supplied the impoverished communist country with extra cereals, an aid group said on Thursday.
The North began releasing 14kg of rice and maize per worker from June 11 but only in some big cities, South Korea's Good Friends group, which operates in the North, said in its newsletter.
The group earlier reported that the state rations had been cut off in most areas since late last year and in the capital since April, prompting the ruling Workers' Party to use emergency funds to buy food.
Food imports increased this month after China agreed to export an additional 100,000 tons to its ally but the amount is not enough to stop people from dying of starvation, Good Friends said.
North Korea has termed its worsening food shortages a 'life-or-death question' and said resolving it was key to preserving its political system, the group said in a report on Wednesday.
Some foreign analysts believe the North is close to another famine, a decade after up to one million people died of starvation.
Flooding last summer wiped out a significant portion of the harvest and the North has also been hard hit by the global rise in food prices.
The aid group said last week that the North's food shortages had hit even the privileged military, with some hunger-stricken soldiers deserting units.
Since the full-scale famine in the 1990s, North Korea has depended on foreign aid to help feed its 23 million people.
The United States said last month it would provide some 500,000 tonnes of emergency food aid over the next year, with the first shipment expected to arrive this month.
The World Food Programme said in February that the North faces a shortfall of 1.4 million tonnes of food this year, nearly a quarter of its total needs. -- AFP
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