EASON JORDAN, CNN CHIEF NEWS EXECUTIVE: In 1995, it became widely known around the world that North Korea was suffering from a famine, a severe drought, and there was tremendous suffering in that country. No outside news organization was able to gain access to North Korea. We asked to go in with a team. We were repeatedly rebuffed. Then finally I asked to go in alone on an executive mission; they allowed me to go ahead and tell those stories, not just with videotape, but to do live transmissions to the world from North Korean TV. We didn't get to see as many people as we would like because there was tremendous suffering, but the North Korean leadership, I think, was embarrassed to allow us to see that. But we did get to go out into the countryside and see crops that were withering. Clearly, there would be no food for a lot of people in North Korea. It's a country of more than 20 million people, and there was not anything close to an adequate food supply.</s>JORDAN: North Koreans are surviving on meager rations, an average of just 150 grams a day, just 12 spoons full of food, sometimes supplemented by hand-picked grass. International relief workers have branded this drought and its devastating results an invisible catastrophe, a famine unseen by the outside world until now.</s>JORDAN: That was the first coverage ever of the North Korean famine.
CNN 20: Covering the North Korean Famine