North Korea may see the volume of its food shortage reach around 1 million tons next year due mainly to a serious drought that hit the North earlier this year, a South Korean expert said Thursday.

Next year, North Korea's food shortage may reach the largest since the North's leader Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011, according to Kwon Tae-jin, an expert on the North's agriculture at the GS&J Institute. North Korea needs a minimum of 5.4 million tons of food to feed its people.

The average food shortage per year has been around 400,000 to 500,000 tons under Kim's regime, he said.

His claims are based on the assumption that North Korea's crop production may fall 10 percent in 2015 on-year.

Earlier this year, North Korea grappled with what it called its worst drought in 100 years.

A decline in an import of crops by the North from China was also cited as the cause for North Korea's bigger food shortage, he said.

In the January-September period, North Korea imported around 38,000 tons of crops from China, down 30 percent from a year earlier, amid the long-frayed Pyongyang and Beijing ties.

A U.N. report showed in April that about 70 percent of North Korea's 24.6 million people are suffering due to food shortages and 1.8 million, including children and pregnant women, are in need of nutritional food supplies aimed at fighting malnutrition. (Yonhap)