North Koreans are fighting starvation as the Hermit Kingdom continues its isolation from the rest of the world.

Three residents of the totalitarian state secretly communicated with the BBC for months, detailing the horrors of watching their neighbors starve to death as they struggle to survive what may prove to be an even worse hunger crisis than North Korea’s famine in the 1990s, which killed three million people. 

“At first, I was afraid of dying from Covid,” one construction worker told the broadcaster, “but then I began to worry about starving to death.”

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Pyongyang took steps to seal off its borders with Russia and China, constructing hundreds of miles of fences along its frontiers.

Authorities have also reportedly ordered guards to gun down anyone attempting to cross its borders. 

The isolation measures, however, have cut off various pipelines for feeding North Korea’s 26 million citizens, including halting imports from China of grain, along with fertilizer and machinery vital for growing food. 

The country has constantly fallen short in producing enough food to feed its citizens, but the threat of death for border crossers meanwhile has chilled smugglers’ efforts to sneak in food from China, which is sold at unsanctioned markets where many North Koreans buy their groceries. 

One market trader told the BBC that three-fourths of her supply would come from China, but since the pandemic, stalls at her local market are “now empty.” People recently have been knocking at her door begging for something to eat.  

In his village near the Chinese border, the construction worker said that five people had died from starvation due to low food supplies. 

And a woman living in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, revealed that a family of three was found dead at home from hunger. 

“We knocked on their door to give them water, but nobody answered,” the woman said, adding that authorities who entered the home found the family dead.

North Korea’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jon Un, has even publicly broached the subject of a “food shortage” plaguing the nation and promised to boost grain and other agricultural production.  

This, however, has not stopped Pyongyang from funneling by some estimates over $500 million to test 63 ballistic missiles last year as part of the nation’s nuclear arms program — an amount that would cover North Korea’s annual grain shortage. 

The fact that even middle-class residents are experiencing starvation in their neighborhoods is a very concerning sign, experts said. 

“We are not talking about full-scale societal collapse and mass starvation yet, but this does not look good,” North Korea economist Peter Ward told the BBC. 

For many North Koreans, the past three years have shaken their loyalty to their country’s leader.

“Before Covid, people viewed Kim Jong Un positively,” Myong Suk said. “Now almost everyone is full of discontent.”