North Korea Back from the Brink: TOKYO –– With key assistance from the United States and other countries, North Korea has emerged stronger and more stable from an economic and political crisis that the hard-line Communist country has acknowledged left it "at the crossroads of life and death," according to visitors and other outside observers. These sources say the North Korean economy is growing for the first time in nine years, the mass starvation of the past five years is largely over, and the political stagnation that followed the death of state founder Kim Il Sung in 1994 has ended with his son's gaining a strong grip on power.