Product Description

What happens when a dictator wins absolute power and isolates a nation from the outside world? In a nightmare of political theory stretched to madness and come to life, North Korea's Kim Jong Il made himself into a living god, surrounded by lies and flattery and beyond criticism. As over two million of his subjects starved to death, Kim Jong Il roamed between palaces staffed by beautiful girls and stocked with expensive international delicacies. Outside, the steel mills shut down, the trains stopped running, the power went out, and the hospitals ran out of medicine. When the population threatened to revolt, Kim imposed a reign of terror, deceived the United Nations, and plundered the country's dwindling resources to become a nuclear power. Now this tiny bankrupt nation is using her nuclear capability to blackmail the United States. Veteran correspondent Jasper Becker takes us inside one of the most secretive countries in the world, exposing the internal chaos, blind faith, rampant corruption, and terrifying cruelty of its rulers. Becker details the vain efforts to change North Korea by actors inside and outside the country and the dangers this highly volatile country continues to pose. This unique land, ruled by one family's megalomania and paranoia, seems destined to survive and linger on, a menace to its own people and to the rest of the world. But should the nations of the world allow this regime to survive? That's the question with which this book concludes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60129 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

The Scotsman, Saturday 23 July 2005
...the journalism is compelling.

Customer Reviews

Eye opener.
This is the first political book i have read for a while,but after everything about the goings on there involving nuclear tests,and hearing their leader(Kim Jong Il) described as a mad-man by journalists, curiosity got the better of me and i thought i would buy,and read Jasper Becker's book to find out more.
The book is very interesting 70% of the time but you have to turn your concentration levels up to eleven for the remaining 30%,especially the history harking back to Kim Il Sung in the 1940's.I wanted to know more about whats happening now, and when Jasper Becker did go into detail about the extravagance and greed,and criminal international dealings,and how unfairly Kim Jong Il treats his people;the book had my full attention.So on that merit i can say it is very well written.So if you think you have got it bad at work,or life in general, just think about what those poor people in North Korea have to go though and,well things don't seem so bad after all.By the way if you were to write something like this in N:Korea there would be hell to pay.

over reacting on hear say stories
Although Jasper Beckers is a great narrator, his book did disappoint me a lot. His whole story is based on hear-say without having been in the DPRK in something like 20 years. His book contains dozens of terrible stories of refugees or people who said to be refugee. Most stories will bring you to a sort of 21st century concentration camp of which their is no escape. (Although all his 'first hand eye witnesses' managed to escape one or more times.)

Reading his book is like seeing a horror movie. Everything is so devastating horrible that one is really waiting for any sort of proof of all the terror being true.... But their he fails. Jasper Beckers only argument is that he heard so many bad stories about the country that it can not be untrue. He simply states that he spoke to many people who all were negative about the DPRK to ignore them.

So if you want a well written page turner BUY THIS BOOK. If you want to have a decent book on the DPRK just look further.

A Book for Bush
North-Korea bashing and scare-mongering. A good book for George W. Bush to read in order to justify his numerous warped decisions.