I think it was more a case of being aided by USSR and China, who both valued NK’s strategic use as a buffer state in the region between themselves and US-controlled Japan and South Korea. Because NK couldn’t trade with anyone else, and doesn’t have much in terms of natural resources, it couldn’t produce much to actually trade with China and the Soviets who, for much of their recent history were little better than third world countries themselves. The deadly effects of trade sanctions are often overlooked, but they are every bit as effective, when ruthlessly policed, as any other weapon of war.

Didn’t NK trade with the USSR and China? In any case, the US trade sanctions don’t help things at all.

US policy in the region is obscene, of course, and has been ever since their gruesome war there. Although North Korea is portrayed around the world as a failed state, the desperate condition of that country is directly attributable to the vicious US trade sanctions imposed against it – longer even than the better known sanctions against Cuba. It would be interesting to see what condition the US would be in after sixty years without being able to trade with anyone.