North Korea's crop prices have shot up sharply following a substantial cut in state food distribution.

According to the monthly report of the World Food Program, the price of maize and imported rice marketed in Pyongyang from March to late April shot up forty and twenty-five percent respectively

Maize prices were triple and imported rice prices double those of the corresponding period in the previous year.

The report said the North's average urban worker can barely manage to purchase three kilograms of rice and five kilograms of maize with his or her monthly paycheck.

It projected that four or five more months of a precarious food situation would continue until the harvest, as pipelines for external food assistance remain effectively closed.