Hong Kong - Starvation is driving some North Koreans to cannibalism, according to reports from exiles fleeing the famine which has ravaged their country, leaving what some refugees say may be as many as a million people dead.
The reports, the most recent of which were published this week in the South China Morning Post, have fuelled debate outside the country about just what the scale of the famine is.
Photographs of undernourished children and barren fields have been seeping out of North Korea for months, as have rumours of cannibalism, but accurate information is almost impossible to come by in the world's most tightly-controlled communist dictatorship.
The Minister of State for Overseas Development Assistance and Human Rights, Ms Liz O'Donnell, has approved a grant of £100,000 to North Korea for emergency food aid. The grant brings the total amount allocated by the Government since the crisis developed in 1996 to £715,000. All assistance has gone towards supplying food aid, mainly through the UN World Food Programme.