PYONGYANG - WHILE the world wonders if North Korea is in the throes of a leadership crisis over Kim Jong-il's suspected stroke, the real power struggle for ordinary people in the hermit state is coping with electricity shortages.

Electric power in North and South Korea NORTH Korea is bracing for a long, hard winter in the impoverished country, where power shortages lead to blackouts. Following are key facts about electric power in South and North Korea. Capacity and output North Korea has the potential to generate about 7,800 megawatts of power, but fuel shortages have reduced output to less than a third of this. The shortfall in turn has kept more than two-thirds of its industrial facilities idle. North Korea's electrical grid still relies on facilities built by Japan during its 1910-1945 colonial rule over the peninsula. North Korea has built thousands of small- to medium-sized hydro plants from 1998 to supply electricity to villages and towns, but not to the country's grid, experts said. South Korea's power capacity is about eight times the North's at about 60,000 megawatts. Power lines across a fortified border In 2005, South Korea offered to supply the North with 2,000 megawatts of power - about equal to the communist state's current output - in return for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme. But the North has scorned this offer and instead has received heavy fuel aid for its denuclearisation. The cost of building the transmission networks and related facilities is 1.5 trillion won (S$1.62 billion), South Korean state power monopoly KEPCO has said. It would take South Korea about three years to build the system. Seoul would like to tie its construction to specific measures made by North Korea to dismantle it nuclear weapons programme. KEPCO began transmitting electricity in 2005 to an industrial complex run by the South in the North Korean city of Kaesong. Nuclear energy North Korea operates a five-megawatt atomic reactor at the Yongbyon complex, the heart of its nuclear programmes. But the power generated at the plant is believed to be barely enough to run the complex and is not for distribution or use outside. South Korea produces about 40 per cent of its electric power at its 20 nuclear plants, ranking sixth in output in the world. The South has no nuclear weapons programme. (Sources: South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, industry reports, KEPCO, Reuters news)

Blackouts frequently interrupted a four-day stay in Pyongyang for South Koreans attending a rare joint seminar between the Cold War rivals, with the North's showcase city often plunged into pitch darkness by power outages.

'What is going on here?' a North Korean border control officer said when computer terminals lost power and the lights went out at the Soviet-era Sunan Airport terminal, which serves Pyongyang, while he was processing the documents of the visiting South Koreans.

One of his colleagues tried in vain to keep the line of visitors moving by checking passports in the faint light from a distant door.

When the sun goes down in Pyongyang, people hurry along unlit sidewalks before they have to grope their way home in near total darkness.

At street level there were far more apartments in complete darkness than there were enjoying the faint glow of fluorescent lights.

Outside observers are equally in the dark over Mr Kim's health and succession plans in Asia's only communist dynasty.

US and South Korean officials said Mr Kim suffered a stroke in August, raising questions about who was in control of the reclusive state and who was making decisions about the North's nuclear weapons programme.

In the past week the secretive North has announced it will close its few border crossings with the South and will refused to allow international inspectors remove nuclear samples from a plutonium-producing plant.

Analysts fear the North is retreating deeper into its shell amid growing speculation over Mr Kim's health.

Outwardly, the North says the moves are in response to perceived mistreatment by conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who cut off what once had been a free flow of unconditional aid when he took office in February and tied future handouts to the North's denuclearisation.

The North's official KCNA news agency said at the weekend that Mr Kim attended an art festival given by soldiers where he heard the troops sing '"Soldier Lives near the General' and waved to the performers.

The appearance at the art performance was one of several events in recent weeks where Mr Kim has been shown in his state's media, although doubts persist about his health.

Inside North Korea, its citizens remain in the dark, figuratively and literally.

The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a front-page feature article on Friday that workers at the Pyongyang power station were hard at work 'in the battle to increase electric power production' under Mr Kim's guidance.

North Korea's dilapidated power system means that its factories are largely idle, dealing a heavy blow to its already battered economy.

'We can bring about exaltation in the production and construction (of electric power) through correct strategy and execution, especially when the condition is adverse,' the newspaper quoted Mr Kim as saying at an unspecified occasion.

The visiting South Koreans were treated to a performance by artistically gifted students but had to wait to applaud because the lights went out at the end of the show in an unheated hall, leaving them wondering if the darkness was part of the act.

One of the visiting South Koreans was injured during a blackout at the hotel where they were staying, considered one of the country's finest. He bumped his head when stranded in a lightless corridor, leaving him with a gash on his forehead and in need of medical treatment.

'It's all because it is so damned dark in there,' a fellow visitor said. -- REUTERS