Russia – North Korea relations caught the public’s imagination when in 2014 Moscow symbolically wrote-off nearly $10 billion dollars in North Korean debt, all accrued during the Soviet Era.

Subsequent developments left little room for doubt that the proclamation of 2015 as a “year of friendship” between the two countries would indeed become a very real policy for Moscow and Pyongyang.

From conducting bilateral trade in Russian rubles to North Korea offering preferential trade options to visiting Russian business delegations, it was soon clear that both sides were serious about warming relations in 2015.

But while much of the developments were predictable given the types of delegations visiting the