North Korea has been having chronic difficulties feeding its population on an almost annual basis. The reasons are manifold and well known. They include low temperature, very irregular precipitation, too little arable land, deforestation that makes floods even worse, droughts that can't be fought properly by irrigation systems because of a lack of electricity, an industry that fails to produce enough fertilizer, and an inefficient agricultural economy that suffers from the limitations of a socialist system. North Korea's comparative advantage clearly is not in staple food production. Imports, however, would need financing by a functioning export industry which does not exist in North Korea as a result of socialist inefficiency, high military spending and international isolation. In this environment survival has hinged on unilateral transfers from the outside, but these rarely come without strings attached. The leadership in Pyongyang has been quite successful in playing its major neighbors and adversaries against each other and using the nuclear issue as a means to hold international attention span so as to assure external aid. As reports like the one below indicate, it has apparently not been sufficiently successful in staving off famine.