“A new assessment by the United Nations has found that harvests in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are up for the third year running, but warns that chronic malnutrition persists,” the U.N. News Centre reports (11/29). “A mission by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) visited North Korea’s nine agricultural provinces in late September and early October around the main annual cereal harvest,” Reuters notes, adding that even with a five percent increase in food production, “the food security situation remains unsatisfactory with 84 percent of households having borderline or poor food consumption” (11/28). Dierk Stegen, WFP representative in North Korea, “said that about 80 percent of North Korean households lacked the essential amount of vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins in their diets,” according to the Associated Press/New York Times (11/28).