North Korea's already devastated economy shrank by 2.3 percent in 2007 due to widespread flooding that cut the impoverished state's farm production by nearly one tenth, South Korea's central bank said in a report on Wednesday.
The North Korean economy is weaker now than it was 20 years ago and experts said the country faces a food shortage this year that rivals those in the mid to late 1990s, when famine killed an estimated 1 million of its 23 million people.
The Bank of Korea estimated that North Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) for last year was 20.7 trillion won ($20.32 billion), down from 21.2 trillion won in 2006 despite the country's location in the middle of one of the world's most vibrant economic regions.