North Korean television viewers had a treat just after New Year’s Day. The state broadcaster aired “72 Hours", a new film, according to NK News, a North Korean-focused news site. The movie tells the story of the first three days of the Korean war and how the conflict was started by the evil South. (In fact, North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, launched the initial attack.) Among the propaganda messages embedded in the tale, a big one is the importance of close ties with Moscow. The film’s fans include the Russian ambassador in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.

       These days Russia and North Korea are writing a new battlefield history together. North Korea has dispatched some 12,000 troops to fight in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The soldiers are believed to be some of North Korea’s most elite, hailing from the “Storm Corps", a special-forces outfit whose lineage may trace back to units sent on a daring but ultimately unsuccessful mission to assassinate South Korea’s president in 1968. North Koreans began appearing at the Ukrainian front in early November and have entered in recent weeks into ever fiercer combat in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces seized territory last year.

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