The North Korean economy is based largely around self-sustainability. Everything is owned by the government, everything is planned by the government. How much, in which way, in what will be produced and consumed is planned by the government. This results in a very fragile economy above which always lurks the possibility of crack down. The slightest mistakes in the planning, or if some natural disaster occurs, always leads to huge economic problems. It is very common that the people are suffering from malnutrition because the planning didn't turned out as predicted. The economy has growth one year, stagnates another, drops in the next, and it is all very unpredictable.