The "Children’s Foodstuffs" factory in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, has a proud tradition of nourishing generations of the country’s children with its fresh and powdered milk and delicious soybean yogurt drinks.

Every morning at 7am, dozens of delivery vans set out from its regional branches to deliver nutritional products to thousands of kindergartens. Such is the importance of their mission that the vans are afforded the same status as ambulances on North Korea’s, admittedly empty, roads.

“Cars need to give way to the soy milk delivery vans. They are called 'kings’ cars' because our Great Leader said that the children of our country are king,” said Cha Song-Chol, the chief of technology, referring to Kim Jong-un, who personally visited the site in 2014.

Equipped with state-of-the-art machinery, the main Pyongyang factory also hosts a large study room where rows of bright researchers pour through government-vetted scientific journals downloaded onto the hermit kingdom’s heavily controlled intranet.

The facility is impressive but the glorification of Kim’s personal instructions to make it a world-class milk provider for the nation’s youth, masks an uncomfortable truth.

During a Telegraph visit last week, a World Food Programme (WFP) logo spotted on the crates hidden underneath layers of white sacks told a darker story of devastating long-term food shortages that in 2018 have left one in five children born under the repressive regime stunted because of chronic malnutrition.