Today I will introduce you to tasty and healthy ways to eat wild grass." That is what makes a meal in North Korea these days. Heard on an official broadcast this spring in a country that has always hated to admit weakness, those words were not so much an imaginative new recipe as a cry for help. Torrential rains last August drowned North Korea's annual harvest and turned its most fertile fields into a wasteland. One year later, the persistent food shortage is limiting many children to 35% of their U.N.-recommended calorie intake, and it has driven villagers into forests to forage for any scraps nature might still provide. Aid officials predict this year's crop will yield little relief for the country's 24 million people. Says V.K. Jain, adviser to the World Food Program in Pyongyang: "It is serious and getting worse every day."

For decades, North Korea's unique blend of diplomatic belligerence and insistent isolation has kept most of the world guessing. But the bad news has been rolling in for so long and with such persistence that the North has been forced to enlighten the world, slightly, for the sake of survival. Now, as reports of disease and malnutrition snowball, analysts are beginning to wonder when, not whether, the North will collapse.

Food is only part of the problem. Six years of negative growth have plunged a faltering economy into complete disarray. Many of the country's factories are idle. Foreign-exchange and energy reserves have all but dried up since its traditional benefactors, Russia and China, halted aid. Satellite photos show vast tracts of denuded forests, their trees long since hacked up for precious fuel or as barter for food. The toll on human beings is reflected in an intelligence report that the North's vaunted 1.2 million-man army, for decades the primary source of instability on Asia's most volatile peninsula, has reduced its height requirement four centimeters.

The prospect of an economic and perhaps political meltdown in North Korea is overshadowing the fear that Pyongyang's recalcitrant Stalinists might suddenly decide once again to march across the 38th parallel. Concerned over the cost of an uncontrolled collapse and bolstered by a series of successful negotiations to restrain North Korea's nuclear-weapons program, the U.S. has been trying to coax North Korea in from the cold. "We now face a new set of risks," Ambassador James Laney told a conference on reunification in Seoul on June 28. "We need to devise a new form of risk management to deal with them." Washington and Tokyo approved $12 million in emergency food aid last month, and the U.S. is considering a variety of other incentives, including a partial lifting of a long-standing economic embargo.

Washington's unilateral largesse, not surprisingly, does not delight South Korea. Though President Kim Young Sam finally approved his own $3 million aid package last week, scholars and government officials insist the food crisis is not really a threat to Pyongyang's equilibrium. Publicly Seoul says its approach to the problem is in tune with Washington's; privately, however, South Korean officials are annoyed that the U.S. has taken a lead in negotiations since the 1994 Geneva "framework agreement." Under that deal, Pyongyang agreed to abandon its nuclear-weapons program in exchange for oil and $4.5 billion worth of financial and technical assistance to build light-water reactors. Believing North Korea has mostly stuck to its side of the bargain so far, the U.S. is maintaining its conciliatory approach. South Korean experts are more guarded. "We must keep up our deterrence," says Chung Tae Ik, the Foreign Ministry's Deputy Minister for Political Affairs. "At the same time we must induce them to the table."

Seoul appears to have lost sight of its own North Korean policy objectives. It's no secret that President Kim Young Sam would like history to remember him as the man who brought Pyongyang back into the fold. Arguing that engagement is critical to such a goal, moderate policymakers and top business leaders have been urging Kim to increase contacts and loosen investment regulations. "When people are working together to make money," says opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, "they do not fight." But four decades under the threat of attack make any concession a political liability. Last year, when the North seized a South Korean fishing boat and arrested the crew of a ship delivering 150,000 tons of emergency rice, the ruling Democratic Liberal Party lost seats in local elections. Only after pressure from Washington and Tokyo--and a slim victory in this April's general election--did Seoul agree last month to commit more emergency aid to the North.

South Koreans are caught between a sentimental desire for reunification and a deep resentment toward the North. "The majority of the people are against aid," says Chung, adding that the government does not foresee either famine or a collapse. Under the best of circumstances, the costs of reunification will be enormous. Hwang Eui Gak, an economics professor at Korea University, estimates that in the first few years of a "peaceful" reunification the South can expect to spend between $480 billion to $609 billion annually--60% of its estimated GDP in the year 2000--to stabilize its neighbor. An unexpected collapse, with chaos and millions of refugees, will raise the burden exponentially. "The cost estimates are so shocking, I hope they wake people up," says Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to Seoul. Does South Korea have any contingency plans for such a disaster? Yes, officials say, but they are top secret.

The dilemma for Washington now is to draw the North out of its isolation while reserving a measure of credit for Kim Young Sam's government. Pyongyang has made the effort all the more difficult by its insistence on dealing only with the U.S. in negotiations that would end the 43-year armistice and establish a permanent peace on the peninsula. In April the U.S. and South Korea proposed four-party peace talks that would include China. So far, Pyongyang has responded with silence.

There are rumblings within the fraternity of North Korea watchers that no news might lead to good news. Reportedly, Beijing arranged a secret meeting between North and South Korean officials last month. As for contacts between Pyongyang and Washington, they now occur with surprising regularity. A U.S. congressional move last week to halve a $25 million contribution for the Korean Energy Development Organization met with a scathing attack from Pyongyang, with a threat to renege on the nuclear-freeze agreement. Yet a 20-member geological-survey team, including South Koreans, arrived there on schedule last Thursday to prepare for construction of the light-water reactors. In the old days the North Koreans would have canceled that mission in a fit of pique.

Over the long term, the hope in Washington is that Kim Jong Il's government recognizes that it can no longer afford its signature belligerence. In recent months, analysts in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have begun to suggest that a policy consensus is emerging in Pyongyang. Since founding father Kim Il Sung died two years ago, the conventional wisdom has been that his heir, Kim Jong Il, was incapable. But Kim is finally expected to take on his father's official titles next year. He recently consolidated his Cabinet with loyalists and family members, several of whom, such as economic-policy czar Kim Jong Woo, have demonstrated to Western officials an interest in opening the country to reform. Political stability in Pyongyang would go a long way toward preventing the catastrophic collapse that many analysts predict a famine might precipitate.

That may just be wishful thinking, since political analysis of the opaque North is based on precious little hard information. There is no sign of real reforms yet, and cynics contend Pyongyang isn't serious about changing its ways--just about getting the embargo lifted. But economists point out that unless investment regulations and trade rules are clarified, foreign companies will stay on the sidelines. That means more economic stagnation--and an eventual meltdown. In the meantime, the shortages are likely to get worse. World Food Program experts believe the October harvest could fall short of domestic needs by approximately 2 million tons, or 20%. Even if the aid flow picks up, North Korea will not be able to survive on a recipe of handouts and wild grass forever.

--Reported by Rahul Jacob and Stella Kim/Seoul and Mia Turner/Beijing