The findings, the result of a needs assessment conducted in February and March, will add to pressure for the United States to resume food aid to North Korea suspended in 2009 after its monitors were expelled. But doing so could be seen as aiding a government that has since advanced its nuclear weapons programs and acted aggressively toward US

ally South Korea.

In its report, the UN said that North Korea has suffered a series of shocks including summer floods and then a harsh winter, “leaving the country highly vulnerable to a food crisis.” It said the worst affected include children, women and the elderly, and recommended providing 430,000 metric tons (473995 tons) of food aid.

North Korea’s public distribution system will run out of food at the beginning of the “lean season” that runs between May and July — between spring and fall harvests — which would “substantially increase the risk of malnutrition and other dizeases,” the report said.

Three UN agencies — the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and UNICEF — conducted the assessment at North Korea’s request. They visited 40 counties in nine of the country’s 11 provinces.

Five nongovernment US aid agencies who visited the North last month reported severe food shortages and alarming malnutrition among children.

The United States says it is considering resumption of food aid to the North, which has had chronic problems in feeding its people since its assistance from the former Soviet Union ended. The country suffered famine in the mid-1990s in which at least hundreds of thousands are believed to have died.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry said Thursday the results of the UN assessment were “dire” and urged resumption of aid if it could be properly monitored.

“It is tempting to withhold food assistance until North Korea abandons its pursuit of nuclear weapons or adopts economic reforms. But the North demonstrated during the famine in the mid-to-late 1990s, in which an estimated 5-10 percent of ordinary North Koreans died, that it is willing to allow its people to suffer enormously,” he said in a statement.

International donors will be concerned that any food aid not be redirected from civilians to North Korea’s powerful military and also will seek to act in concert with South Korea if assistance is restarted.

Tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula after two deadly, unprovoked military attacks on US ally South Korea in the past year. The North also revealed recently that it had developed a new means of generating fissile material that might be used for a nuclear bomb, and talks on its disarming its nuclear programs have stalled for nearly two years.