GANGNEUNG, South Korea—It’s not just the Dear Leader’s cheerleaders who are waving the North Korean flag or cheering the country’s athletes at the Pyeongchang Olympics.

While the coordinated chants of Pyongyang’s official delegation of cheerleaders have grabbed the spotlight here at the Winter Olympics, nationals of other countries have also been waving the distinctive red, white and blue of the North Korean flag and cheering on its athletes—regardless of skeptical glances from onlookers and murky laws that limit or prohibit such displays.

North Korea is one of the world’s most isolated countries, but it has a small and robust coterie of well-wishers all around the world—some of whom have descended upon this ski resort town just 50 miles south of the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula.

Pae Min Ju, a 31-year-old, was born and raised in Japan as part of the island nation’s ethnic Korean minority. She and some 40 others turned up on Wednesday to cheer North Korea’s figure-skating pair, Ryom Tae Ok and Kim Ju Sik.

Pae—who has made six trips to the North but was making only her first visit to the capitalist South—welled up with emotion after the North Koreans skated a clean short program.