April 18, We knew North Korea was desperate for friends, but even we were taken aback to hear of the isolated Stalinist state’s new ally: Burma’s brutal military junta. Pyongyang hasn’t officially confirmed the love-in yet, but a Burmese foreign ministry official let it slip last week that the two countries may soon restore diplomatic ties after a two-decade hiatus.

It’s a desperate coupling, if it happens. U.S. financial sanctions are crippling North Korea’s economy and the value of the greenback is soaring on the Pyongyang black market. Kim Jong Il’s regime has to take its friends where it can find them. Burma can’t be picky either. It has suffered bank runs and a collapsing economy since the U.S. imposed sanctions three years ago in response to the junta’s repression, including the prolonged house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The similarities don’t stop there. From drug smuggling to nuclear ambitions, there’s hardly an illicit activity the two don’t share. But not all’s well with this bundle of fun. Many in Yangon have never forgiven North Korea for the worst terrorist attack in Burma’s history. In 1984, bombers, who admitted to acting on Kim’s orders, targeted South Korea’s visiting cabinet, and killed 21 people, including several ministers. That attack was all the more offensive for its location: The memorial to the country’s founder Aung San, Ms. Suu Kyi’s father.

That explains the long rupture in relations. But Burma’s generals are evidently in a forgiving mood when it comes to such atrocities, perhaps because they are no strangers to terrorizing a civilian population themselves. They can be just as brutal as Kim’s agents — just look at the 80 political prisoners killed in custody since 1989, according to recent U.S. congressional testimony from an opposition activist.

If a regime is judged by its friends, then Burma is a worthy addition to Pyongyang’s diminishing list of allies. No doubt it won’t now be long before an opium pipe or some similar gift from the Burmese junta hangs alongside the Sandinistas’ stuffed crocodile and other offerings from the likes of Stalin, Mugabe and Castro in Kim’s shrine to the world’s worst dictators — his friends.