Ont the food shortage front, North Korea kind of got hit by a perfect storm of problems that might not have been so severe, had they not all occurred in short order. In brief, over the span of several years in the 1990s, the DPRK managed to lose their greatest backer and trading partner with the collapse of the USSR, which in turn meant that flaws present in some already failing internal policies could no longer be ignored, and were, in fact, exacerbated. Then they had widespread flooding that devastated domestic agriculture, making a bad situation worse. International sanctions would have also impeded efforts to turn to international markets temporarily to purchase additional food and necessary supplies to turn the situation around. While the US did supply food aid starting in 1996, much like how the US weaponized the embargos on Cuba and sanctions on Iran in a way that worsened their situation during the Covid pandemic, George W. Bush severely cut US food aid, and in some years, it was eliminated entirely.

There’s a whole article on the subject on Wikipedia that is a good start for understanding it. While there are certainly plenty of things to criticize North Korea for, I think the general “Hurr durr, communism is bad, look at all this nice food I have,” take that has become widespread in the US is a pretty reductive bit of anti-DPRK propaganda. Also, I don’t know how much of their relative success before that point was due to the USSR propping up an allied state and how much could be attributed to Kim Il Sung’s capabilities as a statesman, but his successors don’t seem to be his equal either in finding strong parties to ally with or in their statecraft. It’s also entirely possible that they are simply the Juche version of failsons, slowly dissipating their father’s legacy for their own gratification after having grown up fairly privileged and viewing the enterprise left to them (or state, in this case) purely as part of their inheritance to plunder for personal gain.

i’m actually still learning about north korea as i took interest in it very recently, but i can say a couple of things:

yes, not unlike cuba, they suffer from the blockade and lack of sufficient land. because of that, they used to very heavily rely on the ussr for food and trade, and when it died, their food distribution collapsed for a few years.

though something that’s not talked about enough is how they built their country atop of ashes and a lot preexisting hunger after the korean war and major bombings by the us. this one is a hurdle most socialist countries have to deal with.

that’s not to say communists generally think north korea it’s perfect or else.

i can’t tell you in good faith about their modern internal policy, or the veracity of modern hunger claims because i simply don’t know enough about it yet.

I just realised that the tankie point of view may be described as thinking countries should get what they deserve based on past wrongs regardless of how many people get thrown into the meat grinder due to the current reality.