On October 8, 1985 The New York Times ran a full-page advertisement with the headline, “Korea Has Given Birth To One More Great Hero.” The ad featured a book “authored” by the “hero” Kim Jong Il (who was actually born in 1941, not the 1980s). Strange as it may sound today, North Korean ads such as this were relatively common in major Western newspapers from 1969 to as late as 1997.

In an attempt to impress the West during the Cold War (and beyond), the North Korean government placed full-page ads in The New York Times, The Guardian, The