South Korea and the Great Depression of the 1990s

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, countries such as North Korea saw their economies spiral into chaos. Like Cuba, North Korea was doubly smashed not only by the disappearance of trade, but by further newer, harsher sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. Things were made even worse by massive floods in the North in the middle of the 1990s, followed by an equally devastating drought. This series of natural disasters produced a famine in North Korea, which, according to scholar Meredith Jung-en-Woo, led to the deaths of as many as half a million people in that country.