In the 1970s-1980s, clients of Soviet barbershops were exposed to a unique form of fun. While waiting in line they could read the colorful glossy magazine Korea Today, which was widely distributed in the USSR by the North Korean authorities and, for some unknown reason, settled down mostly in barbershops.

To Soviet readers, these magazines were a window into a crazy, upside-down world.

What made these magazines particularly funny were not even the reports about yet another “on the spot guidance” by the Great Leader, but rather the way such reports were translated into Russian. The phrases like “The