On 13 November 2002, a news photograph recorded North Korean women queuing at a government-run Public Distribution Centre in Chongjin, in the country's northeast. Its caption says the centre supplied roughly 300 grams of food, mostly cereals, per person per day.
Rationing is a state system, but receiving food still happens one person at a time before a scale. The line of people carrying bags shows the distance between an institution and the daily table.