Download or read book The Last Days of Kim Jong il written by Bruce E. Bechtol and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea has remained a thorn in the side of the United States ever since its creation in the aftermath of the Korean conflict of 1950 - 1953. Crafting a foreign policy that effectively deals with North Korea, while still ensuring stability and security on the Korean Peninsula - and in Northeast Asia as a whole - has proved very challenging for successive American administrations. In the wake of ruler Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, analysts and policymakers continue to speculate about the effect his last years as leader will have on the future of North Korea. Bruce Bechtol, Jr. conte.
Download or read book A Kim Jong Il Production written by Paul Fischer and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)—South Korea's most famous actress—and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader's dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated." After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty. Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader's film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il's trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, author Paul Fischer's A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.
Download or read book The Education of Kim Jong Un written by Jung H. Pak and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea's opaqueness combined with its military capabilities make the country and its leader dangerous wild cards in the international community. Brookings Senior Fellow Jung H. Pak, who led the U.S. intelligence community's analysis on Korean issues, tells the story of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's upbringing, provides insight on his decision-making, and makes recommendations on how to thwart Kim's ambitions. In her deep analysis of the personality of the North Korean leader, Pak makes clearer the reasoning behind the way he governs and conducts his foreign affairs.
Download or read book Dear Reader written by Michael Malice and published by Michael Malice. This book was released on 2014-01-25 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No country is as misunderstood as North Korea, and no modern tyrant has remained more mysterious than the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Now, celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice pulls back the curtain to expose the life story of the "Incarnation of Love and Morality." Taken directly from books spirited out of Pyongyang, DEAR READER is a carefully reconstructed first-person account of the man behind the mythology. From his miraculous rainbow-filled birth during the fiery conflict of World War II, Kim Jong Il watched as his beloved Korea finally earned its freedom from the cursed Japanese. Mere years later, the wicked US imperialists took their chance at conquering the liberated nation—with devastating results. But that's only the beginning of the Dear Leader's story. In DEAR READER, Kim Jong Il explains: *How he can shrink time *Why he despises the Mona Lisa *How he recreated the arts in Korea *Why the Juche idea is the greatest concept ever discovered by man *How he handled the crippling famine *Why Kim Jong Un was chosen as successor over his elder brothers With nothing left uncovered, drawing straight from dozens of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of years of Korean history, DEAR READER is both the definitive account of Kim Jong Il's life and the complete stranger-than-fiction history of the world's most unique country.
Download or read book Kim Jong il s Leadership of North Korea written by Jae-Cheon Lim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-24 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kim Jong Il came to power after the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994. Contrary to expectations, he has succeeded in maintaining enough political stability to remain in power. Kim Jong Il's Leadership of North Korea is an examination of how political power has been developed, transmitted from father to son, and now operates in North Korea Using a variety of original North Korean sources as well as South Korean materials Jae-Cheon Lim pieces together the ostensibly contradictory and inconsistent facts into a conceptual coherent framework. This book considers Kim and his leadership through an analytical framework. composed of four main elements: i) Kim as a leader of a totalitarian society; ii) as a politician; iii) as a Korean; and iv) as an individual person. This illuminating account of what constitutes power and how it is used makes an important contribution to the understanding of an opaque and difficult regime. It will be of interest for upper level undergraduate, postgraduates and academics interested in North Korean politics, and also those in Political theory.
Download or read book The Great Successor written by Anna Fifield and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The behind-the-scenes story of the rise and reign of the world's strangest and most elusive tyrant, Kim Jong Un, by the journalist with the best connections and insights into the bizarrely dangerous world of North Korea. Since his birth in 1984, Kim Jong Un has been swaddled in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly -- he could supposedly drive a car at the age of three -- to the grimly bloody stories of family members who perished at his command. Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived, abetted by the approval of Donald Trump and diplomacy's weirdest bromance. Skeptical yet insightful, Fifield creates a captivating portrait of the oddest and most secretive political regime in the world -- one that is isolated yet internationally relevant, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons -- and its ruler, the self-proclaimed Beloved and Respected Leader, Kim Jong Un.
Download or read book The Orphan Master s Son written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.
Download or read book Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader written by Bradley K. Martin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa. The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.
Download or read book Rogue Regime written by Jasper Becker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening look at North Korea, a brutal Stalinist country that has become one of the most volatile hot spots in the world.
Download or read book Becoming Kim Jong Un written by Jung H. Pak and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking account of the rise of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—from his nuclear ambitions to his summits with President Donald J. Trump—by a leading American expert “Shrewdly sheds light on the world’s most recognizable mysterious leader, his life and what’s really going on behind the curtain.”—Newsweek When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea following his father's death in 2011, predictions about his imminent fall were rife. North Korea was isolated, poor, unable to feed its people, and clinging to its nuclear program for legitimacy. Surely this twentysomething with a bizarre haircut and no leadership experience would soon be usurped by his elders. Instead, the opposite happened. Now in his midthirties, Kim Jong Un has solidified his grip on his country and brought the United States and the region to the brink of war. Still, we know so little about him—or how he rules. Enter former CIA analyst Jung Pak, whose brilliant Brookings Institution essay “The Education of Kim Jong Un” cemented her status as the go-to authority on the calculating young leader. From the beginning of Kim’s reign, Pak has been at the forefront of shaping U.S. policy on North Korea and providing strategic assessments for leadership at the highest levels in the government. Now, in this masterly book, she traces and explains Kim’s ascent on the world stage, from his brutal power-consolidating purges to his abrupt pivot toward diplomatic engagement that led to his historic—and still poorly understood—summits with President Trump. She also sheds light on how a top intelligence analyst assesses thorny national security problems: avoiding biases, questioning assumptions, and identifying risks as well as opportunities. In piecing together Kim’s wholly unique life, Pak argues that his personality, perceptions, and preferences are underestimated by Washington policy wonks, who assume he sees the world as they do. As the North Korean nuclear threat grows, Becoming Kim Jong Un gives readers the first authoritative, behind-the-scenes look at Kim’s character and motivations, creating an insightful biography of the enigmatic man who could rule the hermit kingdom for decades—and has already left an indelible imprint on world history.
Download or read book Exit Emperor Kim Jong Il written by John H. Cha and published by Abbott Press. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il, authors John H. Cha and K. J. Sohn present a compelling portrait of two men caught up in a struggle for the survival of North Korean society. Th e product of an eight-year study of individuals who observed and worked under Kim Jong-il, the dictator of North Korea for over thirty years, this biography provides insight into the Kims family corruption of power. The story is told through the eyes of Hwang Jang-yop, a renowned philosopher and writer, former International Secretariat of North Korea, and mentor to Kim Jong-il. It narrates Hwangs journey in his battle against Kims greed for power. It reveals a three-dimensional portrait of Kim Jong-il rarely chronicled, from Kims early days and rise to power to his economic crisis and his continual power struggle. As well as recording the life of Kim, Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il recounts Hwangs defection from North Korea so he could tell the world about the corrupt dictatorship and its policies that he felt were responsible for the massive famine in North Korea. Through testimonies from Hwang and other defectors from North Korea, this biography reveals what was going on inside the man, Kim Jong-il, and the society he ruled.
Download or read book Kim Jong Il written by Michael Breen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-01-29 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kim Jong-il has been the subject of intense interest and fear in recent months. He has been demonised as 'Dr Evil' for his nuclear programme which puts Korea on a collision course with the US. For this reason, the world has a stake in understanding this man and his little-known country. This account aims to tell the compelling story of Kim Jong-il and the country he leads, exploring the pressing question of how he manages to hold onto power in a country that is ravaged by famine and poverty. Unravelling the myths, mysteries, and fallacies that surround this small, desperate country, this fascinating story includes rare photos of Kim Jong-il and his brutal regime.
Download or read book Without You There Is No Us written by Suki Kim and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."
Download or read book Nothing to Envy written by Barbara Demick and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive
Download or read book Messiah written by Bo Hi Pak and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Messiah: My Testimony to Rev. Sun Myung Moon is an autobiographical account of Dr. Bo Hi Pak's forty-year association with the founder of the Unification Movement. Dr. Pak is a former South Korean diplomat who is the principal assistant and translator to Rev. Moon. This personal testimony thoughtfully describes the motivations, behind-the-scenes activities, and inner workings of the Unification Movement. Volume II covers the years 1978-2002.
Download or read book Kim Il Sung written by Dae-Sook Suh and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the rule of the Korean dictator who was premier, and then president, of North Korea until his death.
