The DPRK's Progress in the 1970s

By the 1970s, North Korea had invested billions to bring its economy up-to-world standards. Huge amounts of foreign equipment, including entire factories, had been imported from Western Europe and Japan. The DPRK would always take care to control these visits from the outside. In 1976, a mixed South Korean American crew without North Korean permission began cutting down a tree in the joint security area within the DMZ. Two American officers were killed with clubs and the blunt side of the axes that were carried into the area by the soldiers to chop the trees.