Due largely to inadequate government funding, North Korean diplomats posted abroad have long resorted to “creative” solutions to generate their operating budgets. The North Korean government set up the majority of its embassies, especially those in the developing world, during the height of the competition with South Korea for votes in the United Nations. Pyongyang could not properly fund its embassies and therefore established this self-reliant policy for its diplomats. North Korean diplomats truly embodied the Juche spirit, the North Korean ideology which is often translated as “self-reliance” in Western publications, but it was out of necessity, rather than devotion,