Yes, the communists left behind well-developed energy, military, and engineering capacities everywhere. The first task of the new pro-Western governments was always to liquidate the engineering and military capacities. Without exception.
I can only look at DPRK's MIC advances in the latest decades with envy, and think of Romania's situation, it's MIC had the exact fate you described once "democracy" took over. I would wager Romania's MIC of 1989 was probably more developed that DPRK's was in 1989, and can only think of the enormous lost potential since, back then we were building warships, tanks, IFVs, combat aircraft (including working on supersonic fighters), helicopters, missiles (including AAMs/ASMs) not to mention other smaller systems. The only thing we didn't built was ballistic missiles which i think DPRK already was at the time.
Romania had joint projects with SFRY along probably with DPRK too .
One recent western publication mentions among others DPRK interest in romanian aircraft (IAR-93/99?) and helicopters licence/joint production for instance.
Yes, IAR-93 and IAR-316, both deals were blocked before they could get to the final stages: both used British and French technology - both of which (obviously) did not want to sell weapons technology to North Korea.
