With food experts predicting a possible famine in North Korea as a result of prolonged drought, Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo told the National Assembly that the government stood ready to cooperate with Pyongyang in tackling the emergency.

The entire Korean Peninsula has been hit by a drought this year as a result of the El Nino weather phenomenon and Pyongyang last month said that it was experiencing the worst drought in 100 years. In a statement by the official Korean Central News Agency, North Korea said that some 30 percent of rice paddies around the country were drying up. While some Western observers dispute the claim that it is the “worst drought in 100 years,” the fact that the North is going through a period of severe drought is well corroborated by meteorological observations and a field inspection by an international group led by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The U.N. representatives visiting the breadbasket region of North Hwanghae and South Hwanghae provinces on June 10 said that potato, wheat, and barley harvests could fall by 50 percent in areas hit by the drought. The FAO said that rainfall in 2014 and early 2015 was far below normal, causing wells and reservoirs to dry up. While there isn’t enough information to say whether people are starving or not, the situation is serious, according to an FAO official.

The third year of drought may indeed may just send the country over the brink in terms of food security. The Unification Ministry, a few days before KCNA’s statement on the severe drought, estimated that the North’s grain production may drop by as much as 20 percent from 2014 if drought continues through early July.

It appears that North Korea is preparing for a possible famine. On July 30, it asked Iran, an ally which it is suspected of having assisted in developing a missile program, to provide humanitarian assistance. The fact that Pyongyang has reached out to Iran may be indicative of North Korea’s dire straits.

International food aid to North Korea has been drastically cut in the past several years due to the long-continued nuclear standoff and Pyongyang’s reluctance to allow greater monitoring of the food aid distribution by the NGOs working in the country. The South Korean government has not provided humanitarian assistance at the state level since the 2010 sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in the West Sea, although aid by NGOs and private groups has trickled across the border.

In April, the U.N. asked for $111 million for humanitarian operations in the communist state. Funding for U.N. agencies in North Korea dropped to less than $50 million in 2014 from $300 million in 2004. In making the appeal, it said that 70 percent of the 25 million North Koreans were at risk of starvation. In a May report, the FAO said that the number of hungry people had more than doubled in the last two decades, to total 10.5 million in 2014.

While some observers question the extent of the drought, it is certain that the most vulnerable of the population ― infants, children, nursing mothers and the elderly ― will go hungry without food assistance. North Korea has relied on international food aid ever since the massive famine in the 1990s claimed as many as 3 million lives.

It is uncertain whether the current drought will again lead to such a massive human tragedy, but the international community and South Korea should stand ready to offer assistance. One of the reasons that the 1990s famine was so disastrous was that the North sought outside aid too late.