Just as I was skeptical towards a previously reviewed book about North Korea, “The Aquariums in Pyongyang,” in B.R. Myers “The Cleanest Race” I instead thought that I had found the Rosetta Stone to understand the basic driving forces behind the leadership of the Kim family. Confounding Chinese, American and Japanese experts alike, the Democratic [...]
I have to admit I was skeptical of this book when I first saw it and I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t received it as a gift. The top of the cover says “[t]he terrifying memoir of life in North Korea that our nation’s leaders want you to read.” Our nation’s leaders? [...]
I have to admit that Kim Jong-Il’s demise took me by surprise. Certainly we knew he was ill, but that it had already reached this stage? The subsequent events, however, have been less of a surprise. Kim Jong-Un’s ascent to power has been known at least since 2009, and despite some of the speculations in [...]
In 2005, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew paraphrased Churchill by describing North Korea as “a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.” It certainly isn’t always easy to understand the rationale for the country’s foreign policies, not to speak of its management of the economy that since the 1990s has misfired so badly that millions have starved. [...]
