North Korea's Kim admits food situation 'tense'

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

Kim Jong Un has admitted that North Korea's food situation is ‘tense’, state media reported Wednesday, sounding the alarm in a country that suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands died. The impoverished country, which is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, has long struggled to feed itself, suffering chronic food shortages. And last year the coronavirus pandemic and a series of summer storms and floods added yet more pressure on the flagging economy. At a plenary meeting of the central committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, Kim said the economy improved this year, with industrial output growing 25 percent from a year earlier, the official KCNA news agency reported Wednesday.