In 1965, Wilfred Burchett moved his base from Moscow to Phnom Penh to be closer to the ‘action’ in Vietnam – and as far away from Moscow winters as possible. He had formed a partnership with French filmmaker Roger Pic and their exclusive films in both North and South Vietnam and interviews with Vietnamese leaders made world headlines. Burchett's writings on Vietnam were becoming increasingly influential in the US and Europe, where his Inside Story of the Guerilla War was a bestseller. Burchett was worried that a full US invasion of North Vietnam would drag China into military involvement, and possibly the USSR and its satellites. He envisaged a repeat of the Korean War scenario – with the risk of a nuclear disaster – so in the spring of 1967 he revisited North Korea.

Burchett was also fascinated by the ideological questions being raised in North Korea, and this was what spurred his interest in the North Korean leader. He writes in the Introduction to Again Korea that ‘still another question interested me. There were signs that the North Korean Workers Party under Kim Il Sung was following a line of its own in the international Communist controversy, rejecting total adherence to the views of either Moscow or Peking, while seeming to aim at reconciling what was fundamental in each position. I was also interested in rumors of a “triangle” of ideas between Pyongyang, Hanoi and Havana, a kind of “third line”.’