section_path: Regional history/Far East/North Korean famine in the 1990s
section_name: North Korean famine in the 1990s
paragraph_text: North Korean famine in the 1990s
  
  Famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990s, set off by unprecedented floods. This autarkic urban, industrial state depended on massive inputs of subsidised goods, including fossil fuels, primarily from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. When the Soviet collapse and China's marketization switched trade to a hard currency, full-price basis, North Korea's economy collapsed. The vulnerable agricultural sector experienced a massive failure in 1995–96, expanding to full-fledged famine by 1996–1999.
  
  Estimates based on the North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. North Korea has not yet regained food self-sufficiency and relies on external food aid from China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. While Woo-Cumings have focused on the FAD side of the famine, Moon argues that FAD shifted the incentive structure of the authoritarian regime to react in a way that forced millions of disenfranchised people to starve to death.
  
  According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), North Korea is facing a serious cereal shortfall in 2017 after the country's crop harvest was diminished as a result of severe drought. The FAO estimated that early-season production fell by over 30 percent compared to agricultural output from the previous year, leading to the country's worst famine since 2001.