"the Pyongyang government... appealed for international aid."
"N. Korea faces serious food shortage, UN says" by Edward Cody, Washington Post | July 31, 2008
BEIJING - With shriveled harvests and a cutback in imports, North Korea has slipped back into a serious food shortage that is causing millions of people to go hungry, the United Nations announced yesterday.
The main UN aid agency in North Korea, the World Food Program, will resume emergency operations there in the next two weeks to help feed more than 5 million people.
A UN survey last month showed the most severe and widespread hunger among North Koreans in a decade. The survey was taken after the Pyongyang government, in an unusual gesture, officially acknowledged a growing hunger crisis and appealed for international aid."