Devastating floods, surging international food prices and a collapse of diplomacy with Seoul threaten to plunge North Korea into a famine that may claim 300,000 lives, aid groups say.

Several organisations have given warning that there is a risk of outright famine in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the bleak Stalinist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il.

The United Nations World Food Programme estimates that 6.5 million people are short of food in the country and predicts a doubling of its annual food deficit from 2007 to 1.83 million tonnes this year.

For the 23 million people living behind its paranoid borders the alert marks a terrifying anniversary.

It is now a decade since famine killed more than one million North Koreans and those who survived it recognise the signs of looming disaster: the growing need, for example, to water down rice into gruel to make it go farther.

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