In the extensive scholarly literature on North Korean nationalism, considerable attention has been paid to the economic aspects of the leadership’s nationalist vision. Slogans like charip kyongje (independent economy) and charyok kaengsaeng(regeneration through one’s own efforts) have occupied a prominent place in North Korean propaganda, and the Russian and Eastern European archival documents reveal that Kim Il Sung’s commitment to economic autarky started to generate friction between the DPRK and its communist aid donors as early as the mid-1950s. In subsequent decades, the North Korean leaders frequently complained about the Soviet Bloc’s price system in which Moscow obtained the