Pick up an American newspaper from the early 1970s and anxieties about East Asia back then bear a lot of similarities to the situation on the Korean peninsula today.

An unstable dictator with a religious-like following and propensity for brutality had defiantly built nuclear missiles that put America and its allies at risk. His one-party state used its media to lambaste American imperialism, calling for an all-out war that would lead to its destruction. He would regularly ratchet up international tensions to show his distaste for America’s intervention in his nation’s civil war.