SEOUL (Yonhap) -- An estimated 500,000 North Koreans have cash assets worth more than US$100,000, a researcher at the South Korean state-run institute said Friday, indicating a stark gap between rich and poor in the impoverished communist state.

In a forum held at the National Assembly, Lee In-ho, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, termed those with over $100,000 as the "rich class" of North Korea, whose per capita income is estimated at $1,700, compared with South Korea's $20,000.

Among that elite are 50,000 high-profile officials and their relatives living in the North, 100,000 long-term employees dispatched overseas and those who have connections with such countries as Japan, China and the United States. It also includes 200,000 migrant workers and their families in foreign countries, Lee said.

The number of those estimated as rich underlines a widening divide between the haves and have-nots in the North, which has relied on international handouts since the late 1990s when it suffered a massive famine. Experts have said the North's food shortages may get worse after devastating floods washed away tens of thousands of hectares of farmland in the North in recent months.