NK argues that their regime is superior to all other regimes and prosperity would come any day now. Therefore asking for humanitarian aid would contradict their

NK argues that their regime is superior to all other regimes and prosperity would come any day now. Therefore asking for humanitarian aid would contradict their propaganda. On the other hand, as long as they are the worst of the bad, they have natural allies, like Iran, Myanmar and any other 'bad guy of the week.' In addition they can realistically only sell ballistic missiles and nuclear technology, since they do not produce much interesting stuff besides WMDs. So the NK government has the choice between pushing nuclear technology and missiles, which kind of works in the short run, or they can throw all their previous work in this areas away to start a rather complicated transition to a more long term strategy. Depending on how stable the regime is, it may survive the short term problems such a change of strategy creates.