Soaring global food prices and reluctant donors are pushing North Korea back toward famine, which could see the secretive government turn even more repressive to keep control, a paper released on Wednesday said. "The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago," said the paper from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. Stephan Haggard, who wrote the paper with Marcus Noland, said the sharp increase in world prices for commodities had sent ripples through the communist state's economy.