Hungry North Koreans are expected to receive emergency food aid from the US this week amid increasing concern that the impoverished state is teetering on the brink of another famine.

Amid signs of progress in nuclear disarmament talks, the United Nations World Food Programme has started unloading 37,000 tonnes of American wheat that arrived in the North Korean port of Nampo at the weekend, the first instalment of 400,000 tonnes in US aid.