U.S. citizens who want to buy stuff from North Korea have to write a letter to the U.S. government asking for special permission. As regular listeners know, we’re sort of obsessed with North Korea. So we decided to try to get those letters. Several months ago, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request. It worked! We recently got a stack of heavily redacted letters. On today’s show: we try to figure out who sent the letters, why they wanted to do business with North Korea, and what that tells us about the North Korean economy.