It’s fair to say that most people do not think of North Korea as a trading country. The image of the DPRK as an autarkic “hermit kingdom,” isolated and uninterested in contact with the capitalist world, has become entrenched in the public consciousness.

Yet while it’s true that North Korea’s trade ties are limited, especially during the pandemic, it has not always been so withdrawn: The Kim regime actively pursued trade with Western European countries from the early 1960s, including the U.K., and continued to do so up until the late 1970s. Despite