The United States is in the throes of a movement against racism and police violence. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Elijah McClain and many other Black Americans has brought American human rights abuses to the fore once again, revitalizing picket lines in faraway places, from New York to London to even Seoul.

But as thousands of people around the world spoke up and marched against racism in the United States, words of solidarity rose out of one particularly strange place: North Korea, a country notorious for its own human rights atrocities.