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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Fleeting glimpse of impoverished North Korea AFP - 1 hour 55 minutes ago Send IM Story Print Fleeting glimpse of impoverished North Korea PYONGYANG (AFP) - – A man with a bundle of sticks on his back. Backyard vegetable gardens. These and other fleeting images offer a glimpse of life in troubled North Korea where severe food shortages and malnutrition are endemic -- but where some people drive around in Mercedes-Benz cars. The country is moving towards a transfer of dynastic power after Kim Jong-Un, youngest son of ailing leader Kim Jong-Il, was given senior posts in the ruling communist party at a rare meeting Tuesday and made a four-star general. The conference -- the biggest political gathering in 30 years -- came as the regime struggles to revive the crumbling command economy. Even the showpiece capital Pyongyang appears to be stuck in time, decades past. Foreign visitors are escorted everywhere and forbidden to move about unaccompanied in one of the world's most tightly-controlled nations. But on bus rides around Pyongyang the vegetable gardens were a common sight -- beside city roads, in front of a restaurant that catered to foreigners, and tucked between trees on the way to the airport. Another source of food comes from rivers and streams where people sometimes fish. The man bearing the sticks was walking in a semi-rural part of the city, where a few goats and cows grazed beside yellow rice fields that looked ready for harvest. Others had heavier burdens. They walked with large bags on their backs towards the edge of the city, or beside the Youth Hero Highway heading out of town. There was more traffic beside the 10-lane road than on it, as bicycles outnumbered the occasional local minibus travelling towards Nampo city on the bumpy and cracked deserted highway, one of four in the country. "Our country has lack of petrol," a tourist guide says. "We try our best to economise the petrol, so you cannot find many cars." North Korea remains under various US and UN sanctions. The country was richer than the South in the 1960s but suffered economic decline in the 1990s after the loss of key aid and trade with the collapse of the Soviet bloc. In the mid-to late 1990s Kim Jong-Il presided over a famine which by some estimates killed one million people -- but he has still found the resources to test nuclear weapons twice. Even as severe food shortages continue, the country is estimated to spend up to one quarter of its gross national product on the military, according to the US State Department. One-third of young children are stunted by malnutrition, the UN children's fund estimates. Tuesday's meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea, the first since 1980, was unlikely to herald economic reform since a smooth power transfer is top priority now, said Paik Hak-Soon of South Korea's Sejong Institute think-tank. A government minder, assigned to watch over tourists as well as their local guides, said the average salary in North Korea is 250-300 dollars a month. At the official average exchange rate for August, supplied by South Korea's central bank, that would be at least 25,875 North Korean won. The market rate for that amount of won, however, is the equivalent of 17.25 dollars. A ride on Pyongyang's busy Metro underground or one of its crowded electric trams and battered trolley buses, costs five won, or 0.3 cents at the market rate. In contrast, an Asian visitor said he paid 20 dollars for a taxi ride lasting about 20 minutes to the airport. "Taxis are rarely used by (local) passengers," a guide said. A privileged few, like the boss of a local travel company, rely on neither taxis nor public transit. He drives a black Mercedes-Benz. Tight controls on foreign visitors make it difficult for them to enter any local shops, and guides said they did not have time to arrange a visit to a "very popular" state-run local market. Official stores are visible on the ground floor of many Pyongyang apartment buildings. Some can be seen with displays of shoes, clothes, and what appear to be common household items. Others seemed to have a lot of bottles on their racks, and what looked from a distance like packaged food. The larger Department Store Number One, complete with escalator, was already closed by 6:00 pm one evening. On city sidewalks, small carts offer drinks to passers-by. Since 2005 the communist regime has tried to reassert its grip on the economy, with controls or outright bans on private markets. But a Western visitor said he stumbled upon what appeared to be an unofficial market that stretched for about 100 metres (yards) in a back alley. The vendors squatted with simple goods in front of them: cigarettes, women's underwear, vegetables, he said. For those with foreign currency, a different world awaits at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, which has more than 1,000 rooms and is one of two "deluxe" hotels in the capital. The Yanggakdo is reluctant to sell won to foreigners but the hotel store accepts euros or yuan for its array of merchandise from toothbrushes to imported instant noodles, alcohol, sexual potency drugs, foreign medicines and even intravenous drips. Downstairs in the Pyongyang Casino, Chinese gamblers play baccarat with 1,000-euro chips. Foreign visitors would never know there is a food shortage in the country. They are shuttled to the best restaurants and stuffed with multiple courses. First-time tourists are surprised that even the national carrier Air Koryo serves a tasty, full meal including rice, chicken, fish, fruit salad and cake on the way to Pyongyang. The return flight offers more spartan fare: A bun slathered in margarine, with a small meat patty in the centre. 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