The World Food Programme has announced it will resume supplying food aid to North Korea. The agency suspended its operations late last year after the North Korean government asked it to focus on aid geared towards economic development. Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme’s Asia Director, made the announcement Wednesday.

• Tony Banbury: “It is difficult for the WFP to have a programme where we are not going to be able to assist people who we believe need that assistance. The government, though, continues to tell us that they are going to take care of them. I hope very much that is true, but until last year we thought those people really needed our help. And they did need our help at that time. If the government is able to step in and fill the gap, well then that will be great. Our concern, though, is that perhaps that won’t be the case for all of those 4.2 million.”