The Voice of America says that North Korea’s grain imports from China showed a more than fourfold surge this year.

Kwon Tae-jin, head of South Korean agricultural think tank GS&J Institute's North Korea and East Asia division, told the U.S. broadcaster on Saturday that the North brought in 16-thousand-300 tons of grain from China from January to May, four-point-four times larger than the 36-hundred tons from a year earlier.

The North’s grain imports from China in May also marked an almost four-fold on-year increase, importing about 56-hundred tons.

Of the May imports, rice took up the biggest share of 35-hundred tons, followed by corn, starch, wheat flour and bean products.