The Washington Post:  Footage shot inside of North Korea has revealed that the country could be on the verge of a famine, showing filthy, homeless and orphaned children begging for scraps and soldiers stealing food from rice sellers.  The video was shot over a period of several months by an undercover North Korean journalist who smuggled the footage out to China and could face the death penalty.  It was obtained by Australian Broadcasting Corp this week.  In the video, young children blackened with dirt beg for food, including an eight-year-old boy who tells the reporter, "My father died and my mother left me.  I sleep outdoors."  The boy is one of many orphans in the country whose parents died of starvation or forced labor camps.  The army too is starting to go hungry, with one soldier saying, he estimates half of the soldiers are malnourished.  The state no longer has any rations to give them.  In the video, a party official demands a donation of rice from a stallholder, who protests that his business is bad.  "Shut up," the official says, "Don't offer excuses."  ABC speculates that the fact that even the army is starving shows that Kim Jong-il could be losing his grip.  The rampant corruption in the country also becomes apparent in footage of North Koreans toiling over a private railway track for Kim Jong-un, son of the country's leader Kim Jong-il and heir apparent.  Soon, 27-year-old Jong-un may be presiding over a country of starving serfs.  North Korea had a famine in the late 1990s that killed 2 million people, according to ABC.   

My Comments:  According to WorldHunger.org, there are 925 million hungry people in the world, broken down as follows:  578 million in Asia and the Pacific; 239 million in Sub-Saharan Africa; 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 37 million in the Near East and North Africa; 19 million in developed countries.  These 2010 statistics constitute almost one-sixth of the world's population; but with storms and floods having ruined crops last year and this year, the situation is worse.  The Bible tells us that in the last days there will be famine, "There will be great earthquakes in various places, famines, pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven" Luke 21:11.