He said his family suffered during the 1990s North Korean famine, and his father died of malnutrition at age 42. “We survived by eating only grass, but my sibling nearly died of malnutrition ...

1991-1993 – Famine in Somalia, after the government’s fall and civil war, affects more than 3 million people. 1995-1999 – North Korean famine results in an estimated 2.5 million deaths.

There have been other persistent but unconfirmed reports of cannibalism in famine-stricken North Korea, which has seen severe food shortages from economic mismanagement and natural disasters.

At the height of the North's famine and uncertainties about the succession of Kim Jong Il, some members of the South Korean government have speculated that the North was such a weak "tree" that ...

North Korea’s public health system collapsed in the wake of a famine of the 1990s when doctors were forced to use beer bottles to construct intravenous systems, according to defectors.