Back in the 1970s, Western media habitually described North Korea as a ‘fellow communist state’ of the Soviet Union.

Of course, observers were aware that actual relations between Moscow and Pyongyang were complicated, but this did not necessarily register with the general public.

For both the left and right, the USSR and DPRK were bracketed together as two ‘communist states’ rather hostile towards the United States and the West in general and, presumably, bound by ties of ideological and geopolitical solidarity.

Of course, the present author, then a teenager in the Soviet Union, knew this was not the case. It