WFP resumes food aid to North Korea

The World Food Program will resume food aid to the hunger-stricken country of North Korea, but the operation will be smaller than it was before its suspension last December, the U.N. agency said.

The new program will feed 1.9 million of the "most needy" people in the North, Tony Banbury, the agency's Asia regional director, said at a news conference.

That is much less than the 6.5 million people the agency was feeding in past years.

North Korea has relied for more than a decade on foreign donations to feed its people. The WFP suspended aid in December after the North's government asked the agency to shift its focus to economic development aid. The two sides have been negotiating since then.