South Korea is estimating that the North Korean army consumes about 270-thousand tons of food annually.

The Unification Ministry said in a report it submitted to parliament that the secretive North Korean regime makes it difficult to check whether South Korean aid assistance is distributed among North Korean people or if it is given to the military.

The ministry’s report said that 2.85 million tons of food was provided by South Korea to North Korea in the form of aid from 1995 to 2007.

The ministry said about an alleged one million tons of rice set aside for military use by the North that it is likely that Pyongyang has accumulated food reserves for emergencies, but that nothing concrete about such reserves, including the amount, is known.