A starving man in North Korea has been executed after murdering his two children for food

A hidden famine in the farming provinces of North and South Hwanghae is believed to have killed up to 10,000 people and there are fears that incidents of cannibalism have risen. The grim story is just one to emerge as residents battle starvation after a drought hit farms and shortages were compounded by party officials confiscating food. Undercover reporters say that one man dug up his grandchild's corpse and ate it. Another, boiled his own child for food. It has not the first time that reports of cannibalism have come out of the country. In May 2012, the South Korean state-run Korean Institute for National Unification said that one man was executed after eating part of a colleague and then trying to sell the remains as mutton. One man killed and ate a girl and a third report of cannibalism was recorded from 2011. Another man was executed after murdering 11 people and selling the bodies as pork. There were also reports of cannibalism in the country's network of prison camps. North Korea was hit by a terrible famine in the 1990s - known as the Arduous March - which killed between 240,000 and 3.5 million people.