While Kim Jong-il is currently visiting China to likely lobby the Chinese government for aid, the US government has decided to send its own envoy to North Korea to offer up aid as well:

The Obama administration announced Friday that it is sending an official U.S. envoy to North Korea for the first time in two years, with the goal of evaluating the Communist nation’s need for food aid as it struggles with the effects of floods and a brutal winter.

U.N. and humanitarian agencies have been pleading for assistance for the poor, isolated country. North Korea is “highly vulnerable to a food crisis,” Claudia von Roehl, director of the World Food Program’s operations in the country, said Thursday.  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link but it is nothing more than the typical excuses from North Korea blaming the weather instead of their own economic policies that are causing starvation.  Keep in mind that the South Korean government has allowed some of their charities to send food aid to North Korea as well.  It seems like everyone is chipping in to keep North Korea a float with food aid while the Kim regime will continue to spend money on their nuclear and missile programs.