North Korea is not a completely mono-ethnic nation. There are some ethnic minorities inside the country, the most significant being the Chinese diaspora, or Hwagyo in Korean. What is important about them is that they are de jure foreigners: Hwagyo hold citizenship of the People’s Republic of China, not of the DPRK.

During the long history of North Korea, the Hwagyo have experienced many ups and downs, and those who have remained in the country eventually ended up being a ‘trade minority’: rich, but excluded from politics, not that dissimilar from Jews in medieval Europe.

But one of the