Irrigation systems remain crude and inadequate to confronting the vicissitudes of rainfall on the often parched and barren Korean peninsula. This neglect has left North Koreans perpetually on the edge of survival and often with their palms extended to the international community, especially the South.

The North Koreans believe that China sacrificed them for commercial interests, and bilateral relations have yet to recover.

Similarly, northern Italians don t like their tax money being used to help the south, but at least they still have a language more or less in common, as well as TV stars, a national soccer team, and Silvio Berlusconi.

When asked why they failed to include this facility in their declaration of nuclear programs, North Korean officials responded cheerfully and absurdly that it had been built from scratch only after the collapse of the nuclear negotiations in 2008.

The north dominated the armed forces following the Biafra civil war in the late 1960 s.