Germany has pledged 500-thousand euros worth of food aid towards helping famine-stricken North Korea.

Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said North Koreans are in as much dire need of food now as they were back in 1990, when the Stalinist nation was wracked by the worst-ever famine in its history.

The German official noted that the aid aims to help the World Food Program's drive to ease the country's chronic food shortages.

The WFP claims around 35 percent of the country's 23-point-7 million people suffer from extreme malnutrition some 57 percent, it says, barely receive basic nutritional sustenance.