COMMUNISM : N. Korea Unshaken by Winds of Change : The Pyongyang regime is facing tough times, but it clings tenaciously to its hard-line Communist stance.

Towering above the North Korean capital of Pyongyang stands a dramatic symbol of grandiose dreams unfulfilled: the 105-story, pyramid-shaped steel and concrete shell of the Ryugyong Hotel.

The empty skyscraper remains “absolutely the same as in 1989,” noted a recent European visitor to Pyongyang, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Some say they don’t have the money, and some say they don’t have the technology, to finish it.”

North Korea, the most hard-line Communist state in the world, is facing tough times. It’s not just unfinished hotels. Food supplies are growing tighter. Late last year, even foreign diplomats in Pyongyang were issued ration booklets.

“My whole impression of North Korea is that they’ve lived in a bunker for (more than) 30 years now, and they’ve gotten rotten, like old bread when it gets green,” the European visitor said. “They have to open the door and let some fresh air in.”

Beijing is pressing Pyongyang to follow its example of trying to save socialism with a bit of capitalism. But President Kim Il Sung, 79, shows little interest.

The north has taken a few steps, launching negotiations with Japan on diplomatic recognition and holding reconciliation talks with South Korea. But these talks have seen no great progress, and there has been no easing of political repression or central economic control.

The Soviet Union has all but abandoned the north, granting diplomatic recognition to South Korea in September. Since Jan. 1, Moscow has insisted on hard currency payment for most of its trade with Pyongyang.

Last month, in the first visit of a Soviet leader to either Korea, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited the south. Pyongyang responded with a radio commentary calling the talks “a criminal dealing that brought into sharp focus . . . the flunkyist and anti-national scheme of the (South Korean President) Roh Tae Woo group to freeze the division of the territory and . . . achieve the wild ambition of ‘unification by prevailing over communism.’ ”

The north’s stilted rhetoric reveals real fears.

South and north face off against each other with roughly balanced armed forces, a total of 1.5 million troops. But the increasingly confident south--which also is backed by 43,000 U.S. soldiers and a mutual-defense treaty with the United States--has twice the population of the north and more than four times the annual per capita income.

Seeking to build on this success, Seoul is preparing to apply for membership in the United Nations. It has urged the north to also apply, but Pyongyang insists on a joint application as one Korea.

Pyongyang seems to hope for a Chinese veto of South Korean membership. But some diplomats in Beijing believe that Premier Li Peng, during a visit to Pyongyang earlier this month, told Kim that China would abstain.

All signs are that for now, Kim is firmly in control and determined to pass on power to his son, Kim Jong Il, 49. But some observers predict a military takeover after the elder Kim dies.

International concern is mounting that despite the north’s difficulties, it may be only a few years away from nuclear weapon production.

The north has a nuclear complex in Yongbyon, built with Soviet aid, that may already be able to turn out weapons-grade plutonium. The United States, the Soviet Union and Japan are all pressing Pyongyang to agree to international inspection of its facilities.

President Kim has rejected this unless the United States withdraws all tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea. The United States, as a matter of policy, refuses to officially confirm or deny whether it has such weapons there.

Kim, in an April speech calling for the Korean Peninsula to be made a nuclear-free zone, made an oblique acknowledgment of unspecified troubles in the north, an admission rarely heard in years past.

“By fighting in single-hearted unity under the banner of the Juche Idea (of national self-reliance),” he declared, “our people have been able to build socialism even under the most difficult conditions and circumstances.”

Kim pledged that the north will continue on this path.