When Kim Jong Il took over after his father died, he splurged on the military. According to a 2013 U.S. Department of Defense report, North Korea’s shift to a military-first policy “demonstrate[d] its view that ultimately the national security of North Korea is disproportionately dependent on military might in the absence of any other notable elements of national power.” As recent nuclear and missile activity suggests, the trend has continued under the leadership of Kim Jong Un.

Through all this, the special relationship between Cambodia and North Korea remained strong, as I observed while working as a reporter for the Phnom Penh Post in 2013. Phnom Penh, for instance, is the only place I know with a boulevard named for Kim Il Sung. Both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, home to many of Cambodia’s ancient temples, feature “Pyongyang” restaurants, which are believed to funnel money back to the regime and have spread to other cities in the region and abroad. The North Korean embassy in Phnom Penh is located on expensive real estate adjacent to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s house; the building is said to have been Sihanouk’s childhood home. In 2014, the Phnom Penh Post reported that Sihanouk gave it to the North Korean government rent-free for 20 years, after which it was to become a museum. The deal expired in 2011; the North Koreans are still there.

One weekend, I traveled to Siem Reap with a fellow journalist. We wandered into the construction site for what would one day be a Pyongyang-financed, multi-million-dollar museum to glorify Cambodia’s ancient temples. A bald man wearing slacks and a polo shirt approached us. Eyeing us suspiciously, he said the museum was not yet open. But after we promised to take no photos, he led us on a short tour. He pointed to paintings. “Those are paintings,” he said. He pointed to a model of Angkor Wat. “Angkor Wat,” he clarified. He was from Pyongyang, he said, but had lived in Siem Reap off and on for a decade. He refused to tell us his name. At the exit, we paused in front of a painting that depicted a landscape that looked like nothing in Angkor Wat. Our guide said it was the birthplace of Kim Jong Il. “You know him?” he asked.

The museum, called the Angkor Panorama Museum, opened three years later, complete with a café and a movie theater playing a documentary that “fully shows high devotion and creative ability of Khmer people.” Its main feature: a large panoramic mural, painted in the North Korean socialist-realist style, depicting the history of Angkor Wat, and featuring an estimated 45,000 distinct characters (or so they say).

But oddities like the museum, along with North Korea’s culinary offerings, obscure the more nefarious allegations of its ongoing misadventures in the region. In 2014, the United Nations raised questions about alleged connections between North Korea’s embassy in Singapore and a shady arms deal. In August 2016, Egyptian authorities found that a North Korean vessel flying the Cambodian flag (an attempt to evade sanctions) had been transporting a shipment of 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. The UN has also examined links between a North Korean firm tied to the country’s intelligence services and companies in Malaysia and Singapore.