Interesting account of the historical background of how the two Koreas came into being and how their futures took the trajectories they did. Korea was historically a vassal state of China sort of a protectorate. In the early part of the 20th century it was annexed by a resurgent Japan and became a reluctant party to it's empire.

After WWII the two superpowers decided to split Korea at the very arbitrary 38th parallel with the North coming under the Soviet Orbit and the South under the influence of the US. The Soviets had to pick a stooge to run the northern part of the Peninsula so selected a pliant Kim Il Sung while there were several more deserving candidates. They were the ones who built up his image, projecting him to a level far above his original stature which was a minor minion in the Sino-Soviet war machine. He was the one who created a state where the people were made obligated to be greatful to it's benevolent leader. Following in his footsteps was his equally bizzare and subhuman offspring Kim Jong Il. A man who presided over the death of nearly 5 million of his own countrymen through starvation, purges and executions. A man who maintained a 10000 bottle wine cellar, an army of gourmet chefs and the best gourmet food flown in from around the world when his people were falling dead on the street from starvation. All this in a region of wealth and plenty and not sub-saharan africa.

The South was also ruled by a brutal dictator but his tactic was to give free reign to the Capitalists especially the founder of Hyundai who founded the Chaebols. Due to this tactic, South Korea has experienced exponential growth and prosperity.

Interesting account of the historical background of how the two Koreas came into being and how their futures took the trajectories they did. Korea was historically a vassal state of China sort of a protectorate. In the early part of the 20th century it was annexed by a resurgent Japan and became a reluctant party to it's empire. He was the one who created a state where the people were made obligated to be greatful to it's benevolent leader. Following in his footsteps was his equally bizzare offspring Kim Jong Il. A man who presided over the death of nearly 5 million of his own countrymen through starvation, purges and executions. A man who relentlessly pursued the

After WWII the two superpowers decided to split Korea at the very arbitrary 38th parallel with the North coming under the Soviet Orbit and the South under the influence of the US. The Soviets had to pick a stooge to run the northern part of the Peninsula so selected a pliant Kim Il Sung while there were several more deserving candidates. They were the ones who built up his image, projecting him to a level far above his original stature which was a minor minion in the Sino-Soviet war machine. Following in his foorsteps was his equally bizzare and subhuman offspring Kim Jong Il. A man who maintained a 10000 bottle wine cellar, an army of gourmet chefs and the best gourmet food flown in from around the world when his people were falling dead on the street from starvation. All this in a region of wealth and plenty and not sub-saharan africa.

The South was also ruled by a brutal dictator but his tactic was to give free reign to the Capitalists especially the founder of Hyundai who founded the Chaebols. Due to this tactic, South Korea has experienced exponential growth and prosperity.

A good overview of the operations of the North Korean government, it relies heavily on defector sources and is a pretty easy read. One drawback is that its primary focus on Kim Jong Il makes it a little dated now, but it still gives a good sense of the workings of the Kim family and the government. ( )

Although this book is now a few years old, nothing that the North Korean regime has said or done since the mid 2000s leads one to challenge the picture presented in this book. The author, a foreign correspondent of long standing, covers many aspects of the history of the Koreas, the Kim family and the way in which they have systematically exploited their people and kept them cut off from the outside world in an intense and all-embracing way that very few other modern regimes have managed, except perhaps Enver Hoxha's Albania and Pol Pot's Kampuchea. Some of the examples of totalitarian repression, famine and extremely bizarre behaviour described here are almost unbelievable to a reader living in a stable Western democracy; indeed that very unbelievability has done the North Korean people a similar disservice to that inflicted on Jews when the first reports from the Holocaust leaked out and so much public and Governmental opinion in the West refused to believe such horrors could really be happening. But this book is not simply a catalogue of atrocities. The author quotes a wide range of different opinions and analyses North Korea's international role in nuclear weapons proliferation, the politics of trade, aid and international development, and the shifting nuances of its relationship with the Soviet Union/Russia and China. He comes up with a reasoned, though rather downbeat conclusion that neither the engagement approach of Bill Clinton and former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, nor the more confrontational approaches adopted earlier and later have really worked, but that there needs to be some kind of firmer international structure to isolate such rogue nations (at the time of writing this, even China seems to have lost patience with its former staunch ally). With the coming to power of the youthful Kim Jong Un, the regime's natural unravelling seems to be further away than ever before; there is no chance of a North Korean Gorbachev, nor, it would seem, even a North Korean Deng Xiao Ping.

My only small criticisms about the book were that the author occasionally jumped around a bit chronologically and there were sometimes a few too many dry economic statistics for this reader. 4.5/5 ( )