Global Changes Skew Calculus Of Food Aid For N. Korea

"China will be elastic," said Lankov, a Russian who studied in the North and is a periodic visitor there. "They are unhappy with North Korea and they want to keep pressure on Kim, but they don't want collapse and they don't want to risk a refugee mess on their border during the Olympics."

In the 1990s, weather-related crop failures in North Korea combined with a reduction in aid from China and from states of the collapsed Soviet Union to cause widespread famine that killed an estimated 2 million people. Since then, though, the risk of famine has fallen substantially, according to food aid specialists and political analysts.

Behind its closed borders, the country has undergone a fundamental change. Analysts say North Korea now has two economies: the crumbling state system, which often fails to pay salaries and supply food, and a growing network of neighborhood markets, where people buy and sell, free of government controls. Kim's government grudgingly tolerates these places.

In the markets -- despite periodic police raids and crackdowns -- euros and dollars can buy Chinese gadgets and clothes. Local and imported food is also available for purchase or barter and would no doubt increase, arriving illegally if necessary, in response to a sudden spike in demand.

"You will never see mass starvation again," said Lee Seung-yong, secretary general of Good Friends, a Seoul-based charity with contacts across the North. "Except for some isolated areas, people have found ways to survive. They know they cannot depend on the government."

Institutionally, mechanisms are in place in North Korea to ring the international alarm bell before hunger turns into mass starvation. The World Food Program monitors nutrition in 50 counties, and the Kim government has become expert in asking for help.

But while famine is much less likely than in the 1990s, so is loyal public tolerance of food shortages, analysts and aid officials say.

These experts agree that cynicism and restiveness have increased because of the highly visible failings of Kim's government, the willingness of poorly paid police to take bribes and the now-proven ability of markets to deliver food and other goods that the state cannot provide.

"There is a small but growing potential of rebellion if the food supply dries up -- and Kim's government knows it," said Lankov, echoing several other analysts and aid experts.

All this could make the coming summer a test of Kim's ability to procure food and keep the lid on inside North Korea while maintaining good relations with his most important patron, China.

Unless foreign aid arrives, food shortages are expected to worsen just as Beijing begins to host the Olympics.

Special correspondent Stella Kim contributed to this report.