While the leaders feast on lobster the rest face renewed famine

The attention given to North Korea's nuclear weapons programme ignores the real menace that Kim Jong Il poses to his people.

He is already responsible for allowing two or three million people to starve to death during the 1990s, a death toll proportionally higher than in any 20th-century famine.

The nadir of the famine came in 1996-97. At that time, refugees entering China reported witnessing public executions of people for being caught stealing food or for cannibalism. They were garroted or burnt at the stake.

While the North Korean media was instructing the masses to cook "food substitutes" from mixed straw, weeds and husks, Kim Jong Il had Ermanno Furlanis, an Italian pizza chef, flown out from Trieste. North Korea's leader and his followers dined on lobsters and French wine and cheese.

It is far from clear exactly how many will face starvation again if restricting food aid is used to pressure North Korea into halting its nuclear weapons programme.

The country has kept secret the size of the remaining population. International organisations use figures ranging from 21 million to 24.5 million, but some aid workers speculate it may have fallen to 16 million, allowing food production and demand to come into equilibrium.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is warning of severe shortages, especially in the cities, where rations may soon drop to just 270g a day – half the standard emergency food ration. But others doubt things are so bad.

Analysts at the Bank of Korea in Seoul, South Korea's capital, say that in the past three years the North's economy has improved enough to put economic output back to where it was before the food crisis was acknowledged in 1995. "What we hear is that the black market of food is no longer higher than it is over the border in China," said Scott Snyder, of the Asia Foundation in Seoul. "That's a sign there is more food available."

Even the WFP thinks the grain shortfall has halved since the mid-1990s to about a million tons. One reason food production has risen is because of the humble potato. Gerald Bourke, a WFP spokesman, said: "Chairman Kim Jong Il is very keen on potatoes."

Since 1998, the land sown with potatoes has gone from 40,000 to 300,000 hectares (154.4 to 1,158 square miles) but there are fears of blight hitting this winter's crop.

Yet another, more macabre, reason is reduced demand because so many people and livestock are already dead. Death tolls were probably highest in mountainous areas, which often relied on grain shipments from the more fertile plains around the capital.

In a famine, the young and old die first, then the death rate tends to level out as the strongest find ways to survive. But the population is probably still declining because there are more deaths than births.

North Korea has admitted the average age of its population has fallen and the authorities are calling on people to have more babies. They have also bannedcontraception.

Who survives and who bears the brunt of any hardships may be related to the North's class system. The state and the United Nations relies on the public food distribution system but rations are allocated based on an individual's record of loyalty to the regime.

There are three main classes, the "core", the "wavering" and the "hostile", which are sub-divided into 51 grades partly based on family records going back three generations.

The loyal core, around a quarter of the population, lives largely in Pyongyang and works in party or military units. They have the first claim on resources. The wavering class, 55 per cent, includes peasants and low-ranking cadres. Anyone in the hostile class is usually excluded from emergency food rations.

Labour camps are reported to hold 200,000 people, but never for very long. Any political "mistakes", such as failed escape bids, often mean incarceration in these. Refugees call them death camps because so many inmates have died from malnutrition.

The UN organisations still have few facts about the country. They are not able to carry out nutritional surveys freely and a fifth of the country is out of bounds to aid inspectors. The only survey published so far was made in 1998 and involved 3,000 households. The results suggested that 40 per cent of the under-fives were malnourished. But a new survey of 6,000 households will soon be released and the WFP officials thinks it will confirm that children in schools are better fed than before.

The WFP's food monitors in the country can check that the food is delivered to public institutions through the public distribution system but they have no means of verifying how it reaches the people.

Some suspect that North Korea is exporting its food aid. With total trade in 2001 at less than $1bn, and no one prepared to extend fresh credit, the country is in desperate need of hard currency. Aid workers who quit the country in frustration at the difficulties claim food aid was routinely diverted from the public distribution system for sale in free markets.

One European visitor said: "I saw people in a warehouse emptying sacks of imported grain and putting them in sacks with Korean markings."

When food shortages peaked during the height of the crisis and the state had no food to distribute, the towns and cities emptied, factories closed and their equipment was sold for scrap, hungry people roamed the country searching for food and peasants posted guards over their crops. Even soldiers had to steal to live.

The economy has improved because of the aid that North Korea has obtained since 1999. This has come not through the UN but through bilateral deals negotiated in return for diplomatic or strategic concessions.

Since 1999, Kim Jong Il has held summits with Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and the European Union. Each time he was rewarded with deliveries of food, fertiliser and fuel. Although the US was not part of this game, North Korea was still able to pursue a strategy of "money for talks". Nick Eberstadt, a Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank, said: "If [North Korea] agreed simply to show up at meetings, the US would announce a new shipment of 'humanitarian assistance'."