Kim Jong Un has admitted that North Korea's food situation is "tense", state media reported yesterday, sounding the alarm in a country that suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands died. The impoverished country, which is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, has long struggled to feed itself, suffering chronic food shortages. And last year the coronavirus pandemic and a series of summer storms and floods added yet more pressure on the flagging economy.