North Korea needs at least 5.3 million tonnes of food until autumn 2008, but it will only be able to supply 3.9 million, leaving a gap of 1.4 million tonnes, the KREI study said.
It said the communist state's farming sector was damaged to the tune of $275m (£134m) in the flooding.
"The North's food inventory has almost hit the bottom, so unless there's an extraordinary measure to stabilise supply, there may be a situation next year similar to the late 1990s," it said.
North Korea has described this year's floods as amongst the worst the country has seen. They affected one million people, killing at least 600 and wiping out more than 10% of farmland.
But Unicef's deputy representative in North Korea, Michel Le Pechoux, said that while the situation was "still fragile", it was not likely to lead to famine.
He said circumstances were very different to the devastation seen in the 1990s.
The 1990s, of course, saw anywhere between 200,000 and 3.5 million people die from famine in North Korea. The very fact that North Korea is admitting they've suffered severe flood damage is a sign that things could get very bad here.
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