The history of North Korea has predominantly been studied within the context of its passive, isolated, and self-preserving character, largely attributed to the economic, military, and diplomatic challenges stemming from the Korean War and Sino-Soviet conflicts. However, as B.K. Gills noted, there is a consensus in academia that North Korea experienced its most diplomatically successful period during the 1960s and 1970s.Footnote ¹ This raises a pertinent question: can one accurately understand North Korea’s diplomatic zenith through the lens of these, often seemingly contradictory, perspectives?

Moe Taylor’s research makes a significant academic contribution by reorienting our understanding of North Korean diplomacy. He highlights bilateral relations between North Korea and Latin America – an area previously marked by a scholarly vacuum – by transforming the concept of independence, traditionally utilized to explain the diplomacy of weaker nations, into a multifaceted, open, and collective survival concept that revalidates their diplomatic legitimacy. Taylor’s work recalls the achievements of Suh Dae-sook, a former director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaii, who helped to mitigate the “Kim Il-sung Myth” and enabled more profound research on North Korea.

Moreover, the relationship between North Korea and Cuba has often been analysed as a comparative case of reform and opening in the context of the collapse of socialist systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. However, the academic discourse has struggled to convincingly articulate why North Korea and Cuba should be compared, relying on unexamined entities. Taylor’s research restores the neglected diplomatic history between North Korea and Cuba, providing insights into why Cuba’s reform and opening model was significant to North Korea due to their prior close alliance.

Each historical fact presented in Taylor’s research is novel. He asserts that North Korea’s revolutionary strategy and economic development models profoundly influenced Latin American countries, including Cuba, emphasizing the relationship between North Korea’s anti-imperialism and the revolutions in Latin America. He points out the severe lack of transnational studies connecting Asia with Latin America and the Caribbean, arguing for the need to examine North Korea’s prominent role in the Cold War and socialist movements in Latin America. Taylor also emphasizes Vietnam’s role in the development of the bilateral relationship, contending that North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba formed a new informal bloc through their shared interests in anti-imperialism and political independence from China and the Soviet Union. He identifies the leadership structure of this bloc as the Tricontinental and labels it “Radical Third Worldism”, positing that this framework offered a diplomatic space to promote their own form of militant internationalism (pp. 52–58).

While Taylor’s study mainly concentrates on the diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba, it also interrogates the relationships with various South American countries, such as Guatemala and Peru. His research stands out as it explores an area that existing scholarship has virtually neglected, offering a creative approach to the diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba that cannot be compared to other studies. His work provides a coherent narrative of interactions among North Korea, Cuba, and Latin America through the lens of Third Worldism. It reveals how North Korea, under Kim Il-sung’s international leadership and the Korean Workers’ Party’s internationalist stance, and Cuba and Latin America, seeing North Korea as a model for their anti-American and anti-imperialist struggles, sought complete co-existence of interests. Although not explicitly stated by Taylor, his exploration of Third Worldism also implies a shared national development strategy and global strategy between North Korea and Latin America.

As a historian, Taylor analyses a diverse range of primary and secondary sources, including articles from the Cuban Communist Party’s Granma, North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, and declassified Cold War materials from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Such analysis provides a basis for evaluating shared political perceptions, policies, and limitations in bilateral and multilateral relations among North Korea, Cuba, and other Latin American countries. The book offers insights into how North Korea and Cuba (including Vietnam) recognized the strength of the wave of national liberation struggles that formed the foundation of their shared militant internationalism, thereby beginning to perceive their roles as on a par with those of China and the Soviet Union in global affairs. It argues for the necessity of merging revolutionary capacities for socialism with the capacities required for national liberation, clear awareness of which hinges on the evolved sense of autonomy and political and economic independence of socialist nations.

Of particular interest to me is Taylor’s discussion of the Ch’ŏllima Riders (Los Jinetes de Chullima) – over a hundred experts dispatched to assist with Cuba’s 1970 sugar production target at Cuba’s request – which exemplifies the solidarity between North Korea and Cuba during that period (p. 134). As a researcher who has studied diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba, I believe that emphasizing their common historical and institutional backgrounds – such as colonial experiences, revolutions, wars, and the impact of divisionFootnote ² – will greatly aid in explaining the “fate” that has compelled both nations to share a common revolutionary language centred on national liberation.

Lastly, the ultimate objective of North Korean diplomacy has been the unification of the Korean Peninsula under its own terms. In other words, their diplomatic efforts aimed to enhance their international capabilities to achieve a unification that aligns with their ideological framework. While the author focuses solely on diplomatic relations between North Korea and Latin America, it would be beneficial to examine how North Korea utilized its foreign policy to reach its ultimate goals. This consideration could provide further insights into the complexities surrounding the unification of Korea.

This research promises to make a significant academic contribution by exploring how North Korea and Cuba, both socialist minor states, have pursued sovereignty through their solidarity as a means of survival. In doing so, it seeks to restore a narrative centred on smaller nations within the context of Cold War diplomacy, which has often been overshadowed and overlooked in the broader historical discourse. The investigation into the dynamics between these two states not only enhances our understanding of their respective foreign policies but also contributes to the narrative of how minor powers manoeuvred in the geopolitics of the Cold War era.