A week or so ago marked fifty years since the Yodo incident, a story that is bizarre even by the standards of the peculiar world of North Korea — and one that is not completely over yet.

On March 31, 1970, at 7:33 am, Japan Airlines flight 351 took off from Tokyo Haneda Airport. It was a Boeing 727 with 122 passengers and seven crew members destined for the Japanese city of Fukuoka (the plane was called Yodo, or Yodo-go, which is why the incident became known as the ‘Yodo affair’).

Things took an unexpected turn just twenty minutes after