I was in North Korea in August, September, and October 1995. Torrential rains in August caused devastating floods. The corn and rice harvests were destroyed. I saw women and children dressed in rags wandering in the fields looking for leaves, grass, anything they could eat.
For months I never heard birds nor saw squirrels. They had all been eaten. One frigid day in January 1996, I saw thousands of people ice fishing on the Taedong River and nearby lakes. In July, 1996, I visited the zoo in Pyongyang. Most of the animals had starved to death. The few remaining animals like the elephants and monkeys were too feeble to stand.
Just as severe was the lack of fuel to cook food or heat homes and water for washing. The floods had filled the coal mines, making it impossible to continue mining for the nation's basic fuel for heating. Deforestation had already stripped the hills of wood. Rice straw, a common substitute for wood, had all been burned by mid-winter in 1995. By January 1996, smoke coming from chimneys of homes and factories was a rare sight. People appeared in the streets and in the offices in dirty clothes, and themselves unwashed. Only after I had become repeatedly ill did I learn to stop shaking hands because there was no warm water or soap for washing...