In 2018, domestic food production plummeted in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea, DPRK) and has not recovered. United Nations agencies reported that the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) were consequential in the decrease in food production. What has been little reported, however, is the scale of damage to the DPRK food economy from sanctions. The vast majority of the population of 26 million rely on domestic food production to survive. Imports of vehicles, including tractors, spare parts, irrigation equipment, and all technology essential for producing food are banned by the expanded UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017. Oil imports, necessary for crucial aspects of food production (the DPRK is not an oil-producer), from transport to fertilizer production, are capped at an annual amount lower than the amount that South Korea consumes in one day. Without these essential inputs, domestic food production cannot recover. This was not a new scenario for North Koreans. The abrupt end of subsidized trade from Russia, Eastern Europe, and China at the end of the Cold War provided the proximate cause of the famine of the 1990s that had killed up to half a million people. The UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017 reproduced the conditions that generated famine in the 1990s.