North Korea is a communist state and the communist ideology was anti-national from the moment of its inception. The famous communist slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” asserted just that – that people should be united by their class, in a Marxist definition of the word – rather than by nationality or ethnicity. In other words, British worker Smith was supposed to understand that his natural ally is not British capitalist Brown, but rather German worker Schmidt and Japanese worker Sasaki, and that Brown is an enemy of all three, along with German capitalist Meyer and a Japanese capitalist Sugimoto.

However, in reality workers of the world did not unite. Smith would still rather talk to Brown, Schmidt to Meyer and Sasaki to Sugimoto. A worker has topics to discuss with his employer (such as payment and conditions of work), plus they speak the same language and have the same cultural background, while foreign brothers-in-class were more like an abstract entity. Also, how many “workers” even now, and especially then, were able to speak a foreign language?