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These are days of provocation and resentment in North Korea.

Over the last several weeks, the Pyongyang government has fired a series of short-range missiles into the ocean and suffered humiliation as China’s president made his first visit on the Korean peninsula to Seoul rather than further north.

And, according to South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, official word has gone out that Choco Pies should not be made available to North Korean workers. Yes, Choco Pies.

You may not be familiar with the role of the humble Choco Pie in the economic, political and propaganda rivalry between North and South Korea. You may not even be familiar with . But the story of how these snack treats have inserted themselves into geopolitics on the Korean peninsula is worthy of consideration.

Choco Pies themselves are not particularly remarkable. Since the 1970s, they’ve been produced by two South Korean companies, Orion and Lotte Confectionary; and the name pretty much suggests their composition. A Choco Pie is made up of two very dry cookies with marshmallow or cream filling in between, and the entire affair is covered with chocolate.

Within the family tree of snack food, Choco Pies would be cousins of that staple of the American south, the Moon Pie (the one that’s covered with chocolate and made by the Chattanooga Bakery in Tennessee — and not to be confused in any way with the Asian seasonal treat known as Moon Cake).

To say that giving Choco Pies to North Korean workers proved to be a popular idea would be like saying tourism has brought a few dollars to Hawaii’s economy.

Choco Pies are also relatives of the Japanese “Angel Pie,” first produced by Morinaga in the 1950s. More later on the corporate side of Choco Pies — but first let’s look at their more direct place in contemporary Korean capitalism.

Ten years ago, the governments of North and South Korea embarked on a bold experiment called the . It’s a set of factories in a North Korean city close to the demilitarized zone. About 125 South Korean companies run production facilities there, using more than 50,000 North Korean workers to turn out products from clothing to footwear.

There have been complications over the years, notably when the complex was shut down last year for five months due to sharp political tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul.

But one constant over the past decade has been the role of Choco Pies.

One of the initial rules of the government agreement was that South Korean factory owners could not give North Korean workers cash bonuses. From the beginning, North Korea’s government took a very large cut of the workers’ pay, and overtime and production rewards were never part of the deal. So the owners decided to give Choco Pies as bonuses.

To say that giving Choco Pies to North Korean workers proved to be a popular idea would be like saying tourism has brought a few dollars to Hawaii’s economy.

Choco Pies took on lives of their own as a sort of underground currency. And to journalists looking for insights into the closed world of North Korea, some of the claims about the role of Choco Pies have bloated into the policy equivalents of urban myths.

The facts themselves are crazy enough.

Google “Choco Pie North Korea” and you can spend hours sifting through the results.

The Choco Pie phenomenon is pretty well established. Google “Choco Pie North Korea” and you can spend hours sifting through the results. Western media organizations from CNBC and the BBC to the Washington Post and the London Review of Books have covered Choco Pie developments in North Korea for a number of years. A senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation has given a number of interviews on the topic, as have authors of political and historical tomes about North Korea.

Advocacy organizations have released balloons in South Korea to carry Choco Pies over the border. But CNN quoted one “prominent” North Korean defector involved in such efforts , “The Choco Pies are not ideal for the balloons, because they weigh too much and crumble.”

Earlier this year in New York, artist Jin Jo Chae held an exhibit called, “The Choco Pie-ization of North Korea.” Highlights included a gold-plated Choco Pie and melted chocolate smeared .

The exhibit was noteworthy enough for the Korea Society, a nonprofit that works to build bonds between the U.S. and Korea, to  to produce a studio on the topic.

The actual cost of a Choco Pie in North Korea may have been exaggerated by some breathless reporting. Published estimates for the cost of a single “pie” have ranged from a low of 80 cents to a peak of $24 when the Kaesong Industrial Complex was temporarily closed last year. Yes, $24 for a single Choco Pie seems a bit far-fetched, especially when the CIA estimates that per capita income in North Korea is $1,800 a year. That means a single Choco Pie would have cost 16 percent of the average person’s monthly income during the factory shutdown.

Whatever the price of a black-market Choco Pie, the propaganda value is great. As South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper two weeks ago, “Pyongyang appears concerned about the impact the snacks have had on the North Korean public as the products inundate open-air markets.”

As for origins, the Moon Pie was created in 1919 as a snack for coal miners in the southern United States, so the Choco Pie’s tie to manual labor is something of a natural evolution. Historians say the concept came to East Asia when U.S. troops brought Moon Pies to the Asia Pacific.

Sort of makes you wonder about a potential diplomatic role for spam musubi.