A broadcaster run by North Korean defectors says that the current food shortage in North Korea is as serious as the food crisis that hit the nation in the mid-1990s.

Quoting one of its correspondents in Jirin Province in China, Free North Korea Radio is reporting that North Koreans are fearful of death by starvation.

According to the correspondent, a North Korean who crossed the North Korean-Chinese border for food said that many North Koreans will starve to death if China doesn’t provide the food aid that is thought to have been sought by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during his latest visit to Beijing.

During the food crisis in the 1990s, dubbed the “March of Hardships” by North Korean authorities, some three million North Koreans died of starvation.