What a relatively sensible bunch of people the Soviets were. In the mid-1950s they opposed Kim Il Sung's brutal collectivization of agriculture; Kim brushed off their advice, only to demand food aid when a murderous famine ensued. The more the regime evinced its incompetence by relying on foreigners, the more it needed to restrict the people's contact with them. By the 1960s the party line had taken a turn that reminded a Soviet diplomat of Nazi Germany, as citizens who married Europeans were banished to the provinces for "crimes against the Korean race."

Mother of All Mothers (September 2004)