North Korea has ordered the Irish aid agency Concern to leave the country by the end of the year as part of a surprise move to stop foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) providing emergency food aid to the secretive Stalinist state.
"At the moment we have an ultimatum which says we have to leave by December 31st," said Pádraig O'Rourke, Concern's country manager for North Korea.
North Korea says the famine which struck in the mid-1990s is over, and it wants Concern and other aid agencies, including the UN World Food Programme (WFP), to switch to providing longer-term development aid instead of emergency food relief.
"We're optimistic this is just an impasse. There might be a reversal as our operations are basically developmental - our operations are water sanitation and forestry, which are not exactly emergency aid. We feel we're complying," Mr O'Rourke said by telephone from the North Korean capital Pyongyang.
Concern has been in North Korea since 1997, but now Pyongyang wants the work done by it and other agencies to be carried out by North Korean staff - a move aid workers fear could set efforts to help starving North Koreans back by 10 years.
"It's not possible for us to hand over our operations to national staff. We remain hopeful the decision will change once they realise the donors won't fund without an international presence," said Mr O'Rourke, who arrived in North Korea from Zimbabwe in southern Africa just weeks ago.
Shifting from emergency relief to development aid is politically explosive.
Donors such as the US and Japan have committed to emergency food relief in North Korea, but baulk at development aid as they fear it might help to prop up Kim Jong-il's rule in the enclave which Washington calls a "rogue state".
The surprise move comes against the backdrop of deadlock in six-nation talks in Beijing aimed at resolving a nuclear standoff on the Korean peninsula.
Aid experts say increasingly warm bilateral relations between South and North Korea are part of the reason for the ultimatum.
The secretive North Koreans also dislikes foreign workers on the ground, and want to introduce firmer control, aid sources said.
North Korea has relied on outside food aid since a famine in the mid-1990s triggered by a bad harvest and long-term mismanagement of the economy.
Hopes for a reversal of the ultimatum are focusing on a positive outcome to the six-nation talks and forthcoming discussions between senior North Korean representatives and the European Commission's humanitarian aid office, Echo.