A version of this article was first published at SINO-NK.com, an online magazine with a China-North Korea focus. Illustration by NK NEWS illustrator Cammy Smithwick.

Although it has been 60 years since the end of the Korean War and more than two decades since the Berlin Wall fell, many elements of Korean politics and society still reflect the Cold War period.

Korea’s Berlin Wall, the DMZ, is still there, and left wing politicians (and others) still get lampooned (and worse) as commies and, more recently, as jongpuk– pro-North Koreans. It isn’t the 1970s anymore, yet the way