When his feet first hit the tarmac at Pyongyang International Airport in 2002, David Slinn was surprised with how familiar it all felt, despite having spent much of his career on the other side of the world.

“It did feel when I got off the plane that this was a Soviet-style society,” he told NK News. “Which was curious because colleagues with an Asian background had got off the plane in Pyongyang and said ‘this feels like Asia, this feels like Korea.’ That highlights the weak position that North Korea finds itself in: the Soviet system in an Asian society.”