Under the regime’s military first policies, food supplies are known to be withheld from those that need it most and provided to those who are categorized as loyal or useful to the regime. Even internationally provided food assistance is reported to be diverted on many occasions. This use of food as a method of political retribution and coercion must stop.

Famine continues to threaten North Korea and providing food to the starving remains essential. In 2008, Pyongyang temporarily agreed to allow greater access to relief workers, to let them conduct inspections with 24-hour notification and to permit Korean-speaking staff members. The U.S. should seek to have these arrangements re-instated as quickly as possible and work with the WFP to press for access to additional counties and an improved quality of monitoring, including the introduction of modern inventory-management systems that can reduce diversion.

The WFP and humanitarian relief organizations should also be encouraged to attempt to supply food aid to the prisons on an urgent basis in order to alleviate the problem of starvation among prisoners and high levels of deaths in detention from the combination of forced labor and below-subsistence-level food rations.