1989 was a historic year for the entire world. Across Eastern Europe, people who had lived under oppressive communist governments for forty years took to the streets, mostly peacefully, and communism fell. Even in China, North Korea’s neighbour, thousands of students and workers marched in Tiananmen Square in Beijing for more freedom and an end to political corruption.

Two years later, the first communist country in history, the Soviet Union, collapsed. And suddenly, North Korea, in a span of three years, went from being part of an international communist family, with comrades everywhere, to being one of only a handful of officially “Marxist-Leninist” states.