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Title: a truly excellent, nuanced book
Review: One can tell, while reading this book, that Bradley Martin has passion for the subject and has spent a great deal of time trying to capture the full story of North Korea. It starts with the founding of the state, describes the Korean War, then goes into detail about how Kim Il-Sung built the "Worker's Paradise" and how it all started to go so wrong. Along the way, it provides some great, detailed, and nuanced descriptions of the cult of personality, the structure of society, the famine, the evolution of policy in North Korea, the evolution in citizens' attitudes, and the sad dysfunctions of leadership and the culture at large.The book definitely is a bit scattershot, especially towards the end as Martin prints transcriptions of interviews he had with various defectors. But even then, the book is extremely readable and immensely interesting. Anyone who is at least a little bit interested in North Korea should read this book.
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