“I haven’t gone native, but I want us to sign a document handing our aid over to Kim Jong Un.”

So said Shelterbox staffer Alf Evans as he spoke on the phone to the charity’s headquarters from inside North Korea.

Shelterbox, an international disaster-relief charity, works in areas as far apart as Samoa, Namibia and Syria. Responding to the violent typhoons that hit Korea earlier this year, Shelterbox negotiated with the (North) Korea Committee for the Promotion of International Trade to send aid to Pyongyang.

Arriving in the bitterly cold Korean January, Evans oversaw the distribution of donated building materials,