I guess this explains the starvation

(North) Korean News regularly features stories about how party officials were inexpressibly moved by something the Great Leader or the Dear Leader or "Anti-Japanese Heroine Kim Jong Suk" (Kim's mother) did. Here an official is "full of admiration" at the "unimaginable scenery" of the Dear Leader's agricultural experiments in his private garden:

It was on a Sunday of June, Juche 53 (1964).

An official who visited the residence of General Secretary Kim Jong Il was perplexed by the unimaginable scenery of the garden.

There grew thick trees of economic value in the garden and grain crops, industrial crops, vegetables as well as fodder grass in patches.

Sowing soybean as the second crop after wheat in a patch, Kim Jong Il kindly invited the official to join in sowing with a hoe.

The leader said that as the after-crop beans sprout leaves not so much, the close planting would not have influence on the sunshine over the crops, indicating the plant-interval to him.

When the official said that it was likely to harvest two tons of soybean per hectare, the leader stated with confidence that he anticipated three tons, not two tons and he would reap 6.5 tons altogether in the first and second crops.

The official was full of admiration. The leader told the official that he had fixed various species of crops as double-cropping ones and done experimental cultivation for a few years, stressing that the reserves for increasing the grain production were double-cropping and close-planting.

The official keenly realized that the patches were not simple experimental ones but a breeding farm for the development of agriculture of the country.

A related (to my imperialist mind anyway) story announces "Russian Government's Food Donation to DPRK Completed."