North Koreans today are on average smaller than Koreans at any other point in time in the 20th Century, including the pre-colonial period. The pre-colonial period was a time when Korea was an economically primitive, literally feudal, backwater, a plaything of Japan and Russia, and totally incapable of feeding all of its people. That is the extent to which North Korea has failed its people.

North Korea is a unique place. A Stalinist cult of personality has been pushed to the very extreme, so that certain aspects of Juche border on the religious (E.g. The Juche Calendar starts at the time of the Great Leader's conception, Kim Il Sung is the eternal President, Kim Jong Il can allegedly stop time etc.). There is no doubt that for at least some North Koreans, particularly the less well educated, the devotion felt towards Kim Jong Il is very real. Combined with extreme militarisation, obscene ultra-nationalism (The struggle for independence from Japan has not ended in North Korea), and a externally solid political establishment, this leads to the prospects of internal chaos bringing about the downfall of the regime in the short term being negligible.

That said, North Korea has weaknesses. Despite the ultra-nationalism, North Korea is dependant on Chinese support, and China has strong trade links with South Korea. It remains to be seen which Korea they value more highly. Militarily, it is a nation that possesses Soviet technology from the Eighties and earlier, meaning that South Korea's albeit smaller army could probably hold off the North Koreans pretty easily. It's nuclear weapons could produce a blast as powerful as Little Boy; a weapon that was at the forefront of nuclear thinking sixty five years ago. Although a detonation in Seoul would be a disaster, its nowhere near as dangerous as the Soviet Union's missile stocks. And succession to Kim Jong Il is a big unknown. KJL was groomed for decades to be the successor, but his son has only been groomed for about six months, and it seems likely that KJL will die in the near future.

Attempts at economic reform verge on farce. When tentative steps were made in the Nineties, the concept of profit was literally unknown in North Korea. Periodic attempts to revalue the currency to punish black market capitalists are almost funny. If anyone wants to know more about the economy of North Korea, pm me, as I've just done an essay on development in North Korea.

But I don't think North Korea is the threat everyone imagines it to be. Despite the labels of "crazy" and "Axis of Evil", North Korea has acted amazingly intelligently to preserve it's economic system and the ruling clique surrounding it (Although obviously, not so good at protecting North Koreans). By developing nuclear weapons, it can always threaten to use them, and thus demand resources such as grain and fertiliser from the rest of the world. If it actually used them (it?), it would be wiped off the face of the Earth faster than you could say "hot dog".