That's 'cause we bombed the "H" out of North Korea in the 50's and a lot of stuff still hasn't been rebuilt. Kurt
In one of the classes I took to get my TESOL certificate, I was placed in a group that had to do research on Korea. I'd have rather studied Taiwan, or China, but there wasn't a group interested in TW, and the PRC group was dedicated to the 500 level students.
Truth be told, North Korea actually had an incredibly good electrical supply built after the end of the shooting part of the war (technically, North and South Korea are still at war as an actual peace treaty hasn't been signed). NK played the PRC and the USSR off of each other for support, and each country tried to outdo the other. When the USSR imploded, it's support for NK ended. Since China no longer needed to show itself off against the USSR, it too ended its support for the country.
Since NK has a very poor supply of fossil fuels, and without the capital coming in from its former supporters, the power supply quickly failed. Also, faced with starvation, many of its citizens took to metal theft to support themselves, with the electrical grid being a good source of copper.
I may be working in a communist country, but I'm not a communist. I'd have rather gone to Taiwan. That said, I honestly feel very sorry for the plight of the North Korean people. Their situation is pretty F'd, and their military's support for the current regime is baffling... Oh, now I remember, they're the ones busy screwing over the rest of their country for a F'ing buck.
If you're curious to see how bad things are, there's a movie is called "The Crossing" which is based on accounts of many of NK people's stories in their efforts escaping from the North.
https://petapixel.com/2016/01/25/these-photos-got-a-photographer-banned-from-north-korea/
