As regular readers of this newspaper will know, reports on the human rights situation in North Korea tend to read more like a litany of inhuman wrongs.
Aid agencies estimate that in recent years, more than two million people have died of starvation, while a 2002 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization showed that 13 million people, more than half the population, were chronically malnourished.
This situation has barely improved since, partly because food sent from overseas is routinely siphoned off to feed the ruling class and military, prompting agencies such as Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontiers to quit the country.
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