North Korea has long been considered, by the governments of South Korea, Japan and America, as well as other Western allies, as the hardest of hard targets in regard to the areas of intelligence, national security and policymaking. Few outsiders have traveled extensively within or lived in North Korea. As such, any insights into what life in the country is like, and about the workings of its society have relied heavily upon the accounts of defectors. However, the number of defectors has significantly decreased in recent years due to North Korea’s complete lockdown during the COVID pandemic. Since the founding and creation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948, where fleeing the county remains a capital offense, approximately 30,000 North Korean citizens have fled to other countries—with the majority of them residing in South Korea. Previous defector biographies, such as those by Kang Chol-hwan and Jihyun Park, as well as the works of foreign residents, such as Andrei Lankov and Felix Abt, and senior foreign diplomats residing in Pyongyang for several years, have offered a portrait of a hermetically sealed, opaque, tightly controlled and secretive country, with an odd mix of patriotism, pride, cruelty, and, yes, even humanity.