Amid the extensive reportage and analysis of the world's food insecurity in the first few months of 2008, the desperate circumstances of people in North Korea have been
For two generations, the economic performance of the Arab countries of the middle east has been middling. It has been worse than east Asia, better than sub-Saharan Africa, and about
During the 1990s, perhaps one million people, or roughly 5% of the North Korean populace, died in a famine. Social trauma of this magnitude is mercifully rare, but its effects