Yonhap, the official South Korean news agency, reports that North Korea has announced a significant cut in cut in food rations to 250 grams per person per day, the equivalent of two medium-size potatoes. The BBC, which also reported the story, notes that this is half of what the World Food Program recommends as a subsistence amount. The BBC report notes that although the most recent North Korean harvest was the best in a decade, food shortages have increased in recent years.

The ration cut closely follows another Yonhap report that North Korea had sharply increased taxes—officially deemed "voluntary payments"—specifically those it collects from "money-making" individuals. The report, relying on information from a Japanese non-governmental organization, did not specify whether the targets for the tax increase were relatively prosperous traders with connections to the ruling North Korean elite, subsistence-level traders who no longer receive rations, or both.

The BBC report suggested that the ration cuts may also have been part of the regime’s effort to encourage the growth of private markets. While some analysts suggest that the new measures are part of North Korea's effort to reform its collapsed economy, they could also mean that the regime, which has become dependent on falling international aid, has reached a point of sufficient economic desperation that it is being forced to squeeze those on the fringes of its political base.

The BBC, citing World Food Program Figures, reported that 16 million North Koreans out of a total population of 22 million rely on government rations. Dr. Andrei Lankov, a Russian professor and North Korea expert who teaches in Seoul, recently wrote that while in theory all citizens are supposed to receive regular food rations, in practice, only members of the elite have received them in recent years.

Last year, North Korea dramatically raised food prices, an action that some observers speculated may have a move toward economic reform, but which could also have been intended to reallocate food and other scarce resources to citizens in favored political classes. North Korea has a highly complex, officially sanctioned class system that predetermines an individual’s eligibility for state jobs, benefits, and food. Recent reports from Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders have accused the North Korean government of discrimination in its distribution of food and medical care, even suggesting that the regime may be using food as a weapon (see this Asia Times article for further analysis of these charges). A story in today's Chosun Ilbo (Seoul) reports that the U.N.'s first Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea will soon submit a report criticizing North Korea's food distribution policies and lack of transparency in the distribution of international food aid.

According to Section 3(11) of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, more than two million North Koreans may have starved to death since the early 1990s. The leadership of North Korea, officially a socialist state, reportedly lives lavishly, riding in imported luxury cars purchased with state funds. Reports of Kim Jong-Il’s own opulent and quirky lifestyle evoke comparisons with Roman emperors. North Korea is believed to spend as much as 30% of its GDP on its military, the highest such percentage of any country in the world.

Last week, a Seoul-based organization of North Korean defectors released a video that purports to be the first documentation of an anti-government organization inside North Korea itself. Although the tape shows signs of editing, other defectors have confirmed that some of the scenes in the tape show the North Korean city of Hoeryong. The increased availability of cell phones from China, in spite of a government ban on their possession, has also challenged the North Korean regime’s control over the flow of information both internally and from outside North Korea.