The global media remain fascinated with North Korea's supposed weirdness. ‘Common knowledge' portrays a monolithic state and society that is hermetically sealed from knowledge of the outside world. The government controls a robot-like ‘million-man army' willing to sacrifice itself for the ruling Kim family, which is further protected by its willingness to use nuclear weapons as a first-strike capacity in mad policies of aggression. The omniscient government thinks nothing of starving its population and callously diverting foreign aid from the hungry and the vulnerable to the affluent and the privileged. The entire state is little more than a criminal enterprise. North Koreans are unlike any other people in the world in that they believe everything their government tells them and indeed constantly express heartfelt devotion to the ruling family for the poverty in which they live.

Yet, on the face of it, the North Korean government is neither uniquely authoritarian nor the population uniquely economically badly off. From Laos to Turkmenistan in Asia; Equatorial Guinea to Zimbabwe in Africa; and Syria to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, political dissent is brutally suppressed and freedom still to be won. In economic terms, North Korea's gross national income per capita of $583 in 2012 made it the twentieth poorest country in the world but it was not uniquely povertystricken. North Korea's military and security apparatus remained opaque to outside scrutiny but that was not unique to North Korea. The military and the security sectors remain more or less closed to public scrutiny, even in democratic societies. Why then is North Korea considered so exceptionally difficult to understand? Is North Korea really unique?

In the end, it is the North Korean government that benefits from the perpetuation of the myths of North Korean strangeness. Myths of military superiority, fearsomeness and unpredictability help in persuading adversaries to take them seriously. The perpetuation of the ‘common knowledge' assumption that North Korea is uniquely inexplicable inhibits more sober analysis that would expose the vulnerabilities, weaknesses and frailties of the regime.