North Korea is expected to be short more than one million tons of food this year if it does not receive aid from abroad.

According to South Korea’s Korea Rural Economic Institute, North Korea is expected to have produced up to four million tons of grains from last fall to the summer of this year.

However, according to estimates, the communist country will need more than five million tons of grains to get through the year.

The think tank expects China will offer 300-thousand tons of food aid to the North and remains uncertain whether South Korea will provide any food aid due to the frigid status of inter-Korean relations.