North Korea is more of a warped variety of Confucionism rather than a Communist dictatorship of the proletariat. They are singularly incompetent, as their main goal is squelching dissent rather than leading the people in such a way as they can feed themselves.
Until recently, the regime prosecuted city people for raising chickens in the city, because they thought that hearing roosters crowing would cause the few foreigners in Pyongyang to think of the DPRK as a Third World country. So depriving the favored people allowed to live in Pyongyang of protein was less important than impressing a handful of foreigners.
Being as one will hear roosters in Taipei, Shanghai, Peking and Hong Kong, they seem to have stopped punishing chicken raising a couple of years ago, but they still will take away your camera if they catch you photographing a city chicken.
The most influential country in the near future of the DPRK is China, since China has the most porous border and China has more economic importance: the few hotels are staffed by Chinese guest workers, lest tourists pollute the minds of North Korean citizens.
