North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday ordered the dispatch of relief supplies to areas of the country affected by flooding, from which some 5,000 people had to be evacuated.

Images broadcast by state broadcaster KCTV on Saturday showed homes flooded to roof level as well as what appear to be damaged bridges from heavy rainfall.

"Hundreds of hectares of farmland" were submerged in the southern province of South Hamgyong and affected roads and homes after the dykes broke, the channel reports.

The bad weather comes after Kim Jong Un admitted in June that his country was facing a "tense food situation".

He ordered the dispatch of equipment and financial support on Sunday to help South Hamgyong Province in its campaign to restore normalcy, according to the state news agency KCNA.

Officials in that province on Thursday discussed "emergency measures to quickly stabilize the lives of people in the most affected areas," she said.

Crops that could suffer from bad weather

With soil already soggy, further precipitation could cause even more damage, Ri Yong Nam, deputy chief of North Korea's weather services, told KCTV. "We expect heavy rains until August 10 in several regions, mainly near the east coast," he continued. North Korea risks having to contend with a food shortage of 860,000 tonnes this year, according to forecasts from the United Nations Food Agency (FAO) released in July. The agency warned of "a difficult lean period between August and October".

The North Korean regime, under international sanctions for its banned military programs, has long struggled to feed its people and regularly suffers from food shortages.

The pressure on the North Korean economy was increased by the orderly border closures to combat the coronavirus pandemic and by a series of storms and floods in 2020. North Korea experienced a very severe famine that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives as a result of the reduction in aid from Moscow after the Soviet collapse.

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