The North Korean leader called for soldiers to be mobilized to help construct factories in the provinces
Kim Jong-un said that “failure to satisfactorily provide the people in local areas with basic living necessities” has emerged as “a serious political issue” in North Korea, according to a report Thursday by the state-run Rodong Sinmun.
North Korean farms don't let a field lay fallow or rotate crops, so the soil is starved of any nutrition. They also have poured fertilizer all over their fields for decades in order to fix it but it ruined the soil pH and poisoned their soil microbes. NK can't grow the food it needs because it abandoned all farming wisdom and not a single Kim has had any idea how to fix it.
Who will they buy the food from with all the sanctions? North Korea is like this because its the only way for the government to exist with the sanctions and hostile borders. With eased sanctions it would only be a matter of time until they become like Vietnam or China.