(CNN)-- North Korea may be on the brink of another famine as a result of last year's devastating floods, the worldwide increase in food prices, and a malnourished population, the United Nations ...

During the famine in the mid-1990s, grain was hard to come by, he said. North Korea monitoring groups have reported increases in the prices of rice and corn — the two most important staples ...

He says North Korea got into ostrich farming during the famine in the 1990s when between 500,000 and two million North Koreans are thought to have died from starvation. North Korea continues to suffer ...

North Korea is far from a free market ... and some 600,000 people starved to death during a devastating famine in 1996. In response, there was an explosion in the informal economy.