The South Korean group Good Friends, which works in the communist state, said farm workers in South Hwanghae province had received no food rations since November.

The group, quoting residents, said in its newsletter that some farm workers had stopped work as a result, despite the impending spring planting season.

The problem was discussed at the province's communist party convention on Feb 26, it said.

Good Friends said the capital Pyongyang, where the food supply is better than elsewhere, has also been hit hard.

The group said the state reduced the amount of food rations by some 60 per cent in February and by a further 20 per cent this month. In some parts of the capital the rations had been suspended altogether.

'It badly affects us as well this year,' one unidentified official in the capital was quoted as saying.

'Even ranking officials have run out of their (rationed) food supply, while a ban on (private) trade is strictly maintained. It is nothing but a death sentence.'

South Korea's Hyundai Economic Research Institute warned last week that soaring international grain prices would aggravate North Korea's acute food shortage and encourage more people to flee the communist country.

The North was badly hit by famine in the 1990s which killed hundreds of thousands. It has since heavily depended on international food aid to help feed its population.

The World Food Programme said last month that almost a quarter of the North's 23 million people suffer from a severe lack of food.

In a report it said nearly six million people are in need of foreign food aid this year, with children, nursing and expectant mothers, and the poor most at risk. -- AFP