North Koreans told to protect portraits of Kim Jong Un as storm looms

As the storm approached the peninsula, the North carried out "a dynamic campaign to cope with disastrous abnormal climate" and called for measures to minimise damage to the country's economic output. The North has periodically been hit by famine, with hundreds of thousands of people dying -- estimates range into millions -- in the mid-1990s. The country held a high-level party meeting in February to specifically address food shortages and agricultural problems.