North Korea's food situation still bad despite uptick in trade with China, South says

North Korea's food situation is "still bad" despite an uptick in trade with China, the South's unification minister, charged with handling relations with its neighbour, said on Monday.

The North has suffered serious food shortages in recent decades, including famine in the 1990s, often as a result of natural disasters, and international experts have warned that border closures during the Covid-19 pandemic worsened matters.

"North Korea's crop output was not very good last year so this year's food situation isn't very good," the South's Kwon Young-se told reporters.

Shortages had been ameliorated by imports from neighbouring China, Kwon added, though hunger deaths in some regions were mainly due to distribution problems.

"Market prices have stabilised to a certain extent after sharply rising, as North Korea began importing rice and other grains but the situation is still bad."

China's exports to North Korea more than doubled in the first two months of 2023 on the year, with granulated sugar, soybean oil and rice among the major items, customs data showed.

As the pandemic gripped the world in 2020, the regime of Kim Jong Un had embarked on a massive exercise to seal the North's border with China and Russia, cutting routes used by smugglers and defectors.

Kwon said the number of defectors arriving in South Korea had been rising slightly as the Covid curbs eased.

Three North Korean defectors at a state-run resettlement support centre in the South's city of Anseong said control and identity checks stepped up during the pandemic prompted them to leave China, where they had been staying.

For years, UN experts have criticised China for sending back North Korean defectors, whom it regards as illegal migrants fleeing their country for economic reasons.

Human rights activists have voiced concern many refugees might face forcible repatriation when the border re-opens.

"North Korean defectors in China would come to South Korea if they believed the route was safe," said one defector who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the prospect of repatriation to the North, and its consequences, deterred many.

Only 67 defectors made it to South Korea last year, compared with 1,047 in 2019, official data show.