At the time this movie was being made I don't think NK was any more sanctioned than any other Eastern Bloc country, and plenty of other Eastern Bloc countries had little issue scraping together enough cash to pay westerners to do stuff
> At the time this movie was being made I don't think NK was any more sanctioned than any other Eastern Bloc country
The U.S. “imposed sanctions in the 1950s and tightened them further after international bombings against South Korea by North Korean agents during the 1980s” [1]. And by the 80s, savvy Eastern Bloc countries could read the writing on the wall.
Nobody in the Eastern Bloc was trading with the US very much; I was thinking more about other countries. North Korea would have been relatively unfettered within the Eastern Bloc, for example, same as most communist nations.
Also, the director was kidnapped in 1978, so before those sanctions were tightened down in the 80s and well before any Eastern Bloc states could see any writing on the wall. I'd be curious how those restrictions compared to those the US had on most other communist nations.
