I paid a two-week visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or North Korea) in April–May last year. Being a Sinologist by training, the standards I used to evaluate what I saw there were those of a person steeped in the study of Mao's China. If I had brought with me a background in Soviet or Japanese and, most importantly, Korean studies, I would have had more insight into the distinctive characteristics of the Korean road to socialism. But the contrasts between North Korea and China are so startling in many fields and the implications for the wider study of socialist societies so important that I intend to couch this paper in terms of a comparison between the two systems.