Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty [Paperback]

This ambitious book gives an excellent overview of North Korea. Thorough insights into the country's history, political system and society are inextricably linked with the personal histories of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Although I've keenly followed North Korea-related news items since a brief trip there as a tourist in 1997, this book has given me a far more in-depth, and at times horrifying, look at the most fascinating and bizarre country I've ever visited.

On a personal note, one thing I found particularly shocking was to learn of the severity of the food shortages at the time I visited and the criminal disparity in how food was rationed in those years. I was aware of the shortages before my trip but not their extent or how the government was 'dealing' with the crisis. Perhaps not surprisingly, our party was exceptionally well fed during our stay. It's sickening to think this had to have been at the expense of people starving elsewhere.

As for the book, my only gripe is that in places it gets bogged down with dozens of transcripts of interviews with defectors. Much of their testimony was very similar and would have been better served in summary with a few specific examples thrown in for colour.

That doesn't negate the importance of the book to anyone wishing to read a well-rounded and balanced introduction to the good, the bad and the ugly of North Korea. Highly recommended.

Bradley K. Martin's (BM) book is an excellent and rather detailed report on how North Korea works.

In his preface, the author reminds us of H.G. Wells' Time Machine and there especially the part where mankind has split into the Eloi and the Morlocks and how they control the Eloi. In Wells' book this process takes about 800,000 years. In North Korea this process was reduced to just over 50 years. The rest of the book explains how this transformation came about.

BM starts off with the biography of Kim Il-sung and there draws quite a bit on the dictator's own publications. He follows this up with the Korean War and Kim Il-sung's elimination of all rivals and establishment of a totalitarian state. He then goes through all the aspects of Korean society and economy. He also goes through the different classes in society, namely, those connected to the top leadership, those who are not and those who have an unclean spot in their past. One does get the impression that every other person fits into that latter category at least once during their lifetime.

There is also a fair bit on Kim Jong-il and his unpopularity. The author shows that it was Kim Il-sung who messed up the economy. Kim Jong-il is blamed for it because he surfaced officially around the time things started to go wrong. However, there is no need to shed any tears, Kim Jong-il is quite a screwy character in his own right. You can read that right through the whole book.

BM gathers all this information through his own trips to the country and through interviews with defectors. Using such information can be a touchy business, but I don't think the author is at risk here because of the large number of people he must have interviewed for this book (one notices that throughout the book). This should allow him to cross-reference information quite thoroughly.

BM also deals with the nuclear issue. He does support a negotiated settlement. In the book, he recounts the testimony of a defector as to what would be necessary to bring such a settlement about. This testimony struck me as if the US is expected to go the distance with North Korea reaping the benefits without any steps of its own apart from (maybe) dismantling its nuclear programme.

Finally, the author looks into the future. He recounts North Korea's economic liberalisation although I am dubious whether these small steps will lead anywhere useful. I agree with him that it is in the common interest in the region that North Korea continues to exist but I find a regime change inconceivable. There are testimonials from various defectors which seem to imply a lot of discontent, but the book as a whole gives the impression of North Korea being the perfect dictatorship, so that opposition could not organise itself in such a way to bring about a large scale uprising.

In the final pages, the author suggests to Kim Jong-il to change his regime into a Thai-style constitutional monarchy, but having read the book I doubt that the `dear leader' is capable of making such a transition.

I urge you to also read the footnotes because there is a lot of additional information in there.

This is excellent stuff. One note of caution though, it is at times a very chilling read.

A very well researched work detailing the ascent to power of Kim Il Sung and the transfer of power to his son Kin Jong Il thus creating this bizarre Communist Monarchy. The book includes interviews with numerous defectors, describes the appalling living standard of North Koreans, and the cruel prison camps. A very interesting read, money well spent.