Swiss parliament member Ulrich Schüler, who visited North Korea earlier this year, said the North Korean economy appeared to be on the brink of collapse.

Schüler said in a recent interview with a Swiss daily newspaper that he sensed a depressed atmosphere in the already impoverished North Korea and that the people appeared unhealthy.

He added that the communist state was suffering from energy shortages and was only capable of supplying 20-story buildings with water up to the fourth floor.

Schüler, a member of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, visited North Korea between April sixth and tenth with other members of the Swiss parliament, where they looked around Pyongyang, Gaeseong and the Panmunjeom truce village on the inter-Korean border. They then went to Seoul and returned to Switzerland on April 17th.