Nuclear North Korea lights candles to stave off dark

North Korea, with about 22 million people, produces only some 4 percent of the electricity that its booming neighbor South Korea manages to generate for a population of some 48 million.

North Korea says it has built thousands of hydroelectric plants but experts say most are small, providing barely enough power for a village.

And some aid officials have warned that the country, which relies on handouts even in the best of harvests, could be slipping back toward famine this winter.

Earlier this week, the special U.N. envoy for human rights in North Korea urged Pyongyang to spend its limited resources on its people rather than developing nuclear weapons.

North Korea has one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the world and the lack of economic activity is visible at almost every turn in the capital.

At Pyongyang airport, only a handful of planes were on the tarmac. And the only one moving was a North Korean Air Koryo plane which had made a rare trip to Seoul to bring back a group of South Koreans who had helped finance the construction of a hospital in the capital.

On the drive into town, there was almost no traffic on the roads, which looked as though they has seen no major repairs for many years.

And inside block after block of barely lit apartments, workers huddled in the darkness on a winter's night waiting for day to break.