The following article is the fourteenth in a multipart series by Taylor Darby, a pseudonym for a foreign diplomat that worked in Pyongyang for an extended period of time before being forced to leave in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Views expressed in columns are exclusively the author’s own and do not represent those of NK News.

Much of the world imagines North Korea through only the narrow bits and parts that international media chooses to focus on — the missiles, the Kim family, the bad haircuts. With such a high-interest, low-information country like the DPRK, it’s not uncommon