Far too many analysts and scholars of the two Koreas don’t speak a word of the Korean language and don’t know their “pajeon” from their Panmunjom. For the uninitiated, the former is a wonderful fritter enjoyed with rice wine, while the latter is a location on the inter-Korean border where Korean leaders meet and bullets occasionally fly.

In fairness, the difficulties of the Korean language are immense, to say nothing of the often dull intricacies of North Korean propaganda. 

But this is not a challenge for Fyodor Tertitskiy, who deploys Russian, Korean, Chinese and English fluency in his debut English