Secretive nation has a west London outpost.
I visited North Korea recently. Well, my hand did. Well, sort of. I poked it through the bars of this detached house in Ealing.
This is the Embassy of North Korea in London. While it's not strictly true that embassies count as sovereign territory, let's pretend it is, for the better enjoyment of my opening line.
Whether or not my digits troubled the airspace of a totalitarian dictatorship is beside the point. The real novelty is that the embassy is here at all. North Korea is a famously secretive state, permanently at odds with Western governments, including us Brits.
Yet here it sits, in a sizeable 1920s family home on the North Circular. 73 Gunnersbury Avenue to be precise. The DPRK's had a presence here since 2003, when they bought the seven-bedroom house for £1.3 million. As the Daily Telegraph noted at the time "It sounds like a 21st century update of Passport to Pimlico, the vintage Ealing comedy filmed at the studios just along the road".
I haven't seen that film for a while, but I don't remember Margaret Rutherford opening a uranium enrichment plant and disappearing people for listening to K-pop.
The North Korean Embassy looks very much like the other posh houses on this street, with a few minor differences. A lofty flagpole stands to the left of the house. No flag was present on my visit, but a scan of Street View shows that the red-white-and-blue does occasionally fly from the mast. A couple of black, diplomatic cars and a crest above the front door also betray its status.
The embassy hit the headlines in 2016 when the deputy ambassador Thae Yong-ho defected to the South (NOT by crossing Popes Lane to reach Gunnersbury Park, but to South Korea). The ambassador at the time, Hyon Hak-bong was immediately recalled to North Korea, where some speculate he was executed for allowing the defection.
The current head of household is His Excellency Mr Choe Il. I'm not sure if he was in when I passed my hand into his territory. To be honest, I was too chicken to ring the doorbell.
The Telegraph, naturally, had better journalistic confidence back in 2003. They phoned First Secretary Yong-Ho Thae at the new embassy, as the delegation were preparing to move in. "Sorry, the builders are shouting that they need me to help put up a light fitting right now," said Mr Thae. "Call me back in a month." Perhaps it was an Ealing comedy after all.