One of the core dogmas in many authoritarian countries is the constant presence of scheming enemies in the country. Among the opposition to the regime, the argument goes, are foreign spies and saboteurs. This idea was very prominent in Stalin’s USSR and, it seems, in the early years of Kim Il Sung’s North Korea.

July 1955 saw the publication in the DPRK of a book called “Let us Make an Anti-Espionage Struggle Into All-People Movement” (반간첩 투쟁을 전 인민적 운동으로 전개하자). Marked “materials to be given to laborers” (근로자들에게 주는 자료), it was to be distributed among the common people. The number of copies, marked in the book per Soviet tradition, was 10,000 - thus it was not a mandatory reading, but rather a book for those who were interested- and the content provides us with some valuable insights into North Korean state propaganda and the general atmosphere of the time.