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

by Bradley K. Martin

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Asia, Biography, Dystopia, International Relations

868 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2004

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I read Nothing to Envy, a book about six ordinary people in North Korea, I was even more intrigued about this secretive country. I reserved Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader at the library. I was so surprised to see a 700-page book (with 100 pages of footnotes) waiting for me. No way would I read such a thick book, but I decided to check it out anyway and maybe skim parts of it. Wrong. I am reading every page and can't wait to get back to it every chance I get. Bradley Martin is taking me through the history of North Korea from the Korean War to 2004 (when the book was published) and has interviewed dozens of defectors as well as traveled to the DPRK, which is rare. His emphasis is on the lives and personality cults of Kim Sr. and the current Kim Jong-il and how the indoctrination affects the country and its citizens. I am at times incredulous, fascinated, shocked, sickened, amazed. Even the footnotes are interesting! As a result of reading about this extreme government control, I am more grateful for my country's freedoms and more concerned about losing them.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most Americans think of North Korea as a wacky punchline, if they think of it at all. This is really unfortunate because North Korea has such a sad story, like Haiti-level sad. Of course, since North Korea is one of the most secretive societies on Earth, if not the most, it's difficult for anyone to really try to educate themselves on it, but Bradley Martin has done an astonishing amount of research, and if anyone qualifies as a "North Korea expert", it's surely him. The book begins with the story of Kim Il-Sung, the eventual Great Leader. It's common for countries to invent myths about their founders (think George Washington and the cherry tree, or Romulus and Remus), but Kim has whitewashed his past so thoroughly that it took decades of serious digging and discarding of propaganda to uncover even the most basic facts about his early years. Part of this seems to have been nothing but vanity (telling people he was born on Mount Paektu under a double rainbow and so forth), but part of it was due to the fact that he was more culturally Chinese than Korean, having spent the majority of his formative years there.

He seems to have started off as your typical Maoist revolutionary - a natural leader, skillful in choosing between valor and discretion, and above all fortunate to have survived the complete chaos of World War 2 in northern China. Once installed as the leader of the "temporary" state in the Soviet-occupied northern part of Korea thanks to some meetings with the head of the NKVD, he set about purging his rivals and fine-tuning the obsessively nationalist juche personality cult the DPRK would eventually become famous for. It's funny how the "workers of the world unite!" universalist ethos of Marxism is so flexible in the right hands. After his disastrous invasion of the south, Kim turned to rebuilding his shattered country, and I was interested to learn that until the late 60s, the north was actually much more developed than the south, thanks to endemic corruption in the south and the short-term benefits that the northern command economy brought.

Once South Korea pulled ahead, though, Kim's habit of building useless monuments to himself, maintaining a gigantic "defensive" army, and sidelining reformers in favor of his idiot son slowly dragged the country to the nightmarish poverty it's stuck in today. Did you know that during the early 90s famine, political prisoners received a grand total of 33 grams of food per day? An ounce is 28 grams. Just think about that. Thankfully a large portion of the book is interviews with defectors, so you get to hear fascinating details of everyday life, potentially biased though they may be. An especially interesting interview he conducts involves an exchange that captures one of the greatest tragedies of North Korea's unique brand of Marxism: a defector reveals that many people admired the meritocratic ethos of socialism, and were happy to move away from the often-suffocating Confucianism that characterized Korean society before and dedicate their lives to the regime's ideology. However, the leadership in general and the Great and Dear Leaders in particular were anything but meritocratic, and simply populated the upper echelons of DPRK society with the descendants of the original revolutionaries. So in abandoning the filial system, the people found neither family nor meritocracy, just an endless claque of Kims, and in shunning the chaotic but lucrative opportunities of capitalism for the safety and egalitarianism of juche, they got neither prosperity nor equality.

Overall it's an extremely depressing book, not merely because of the endless interviews discussing how horrible life there is, but also in the sections where Martin discusses diplomacy. The rest of the world never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to open up the DPRK, feeding the Kims' paranoia every step of the way. Hopefully the next 60 years will be better for the people of North Korea than the last 60.

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the new Pope recently went to South Korea and, with his haloed head turned towards the North, uttered a solemn prayer for peace and reconciliation. He was probably dreaming of something similar to what his predecessor John Paul did, in Europe, bringing down communist states with papal visits and prayers said out loud among ecstatic crowds.

I do not think it'll be the same with North Korea, however. For out there, they have the same type of religions as the Pope. If Christians have the triumvirate of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, North Koreans also have their holy trio of Kim Il-sung (the Father), Kim Jong-il (the Son) and now Kim Jong-un (the grandson). Christians have images and the cross; North Koreans have statues of the Kims everywhere, and each house have their photos prominently displayed, pins bearing their images worn on the lapels of shirts and jackets. A Christian says grace before meals, a North Korean, from childhood, is taught to give thanks to the Kims before eating anything. While Christians blame their weaknesses and the devils for all the world's ills, North Koreans--despite the harrowing deprivations they suffer (eating wallpapers and grass for lack of food)--would blame their own inadequacies and the evil tandem of the USA and South Korea. The Kims are deities, with stories explaining how that was, like in the Holy Bible. It does not matter that these stories are mostly fiction--they believed them anyway. Their faith is strong and unwavering.

It may even be better in North Korea. As one defector had explained in an interview:

"'The mechanics of Kim Il-sung's ideology and religion are the same...In Christian society if you say I'm an atheist they'll point their fingers at you. It's the same in North Korea. If you say I don't believe in Kim Il-sung you'll get into trouble. In religion, though, God is invisible. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung is alive and you can see him."


This is a fascinating read, I tell you. But needs an updating because it was published at the time Kim Jong-il was still alive.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.0) Tried to fit 3 or 4 different books into one, and it suffered

My primary criticism of this book is that Martin didn't stay focused on one project. He starts off with a tertiary source historical account of North Korea since World War II. That's fine, and he adopts a very objective tone, citing arguments on both sides of many unanswered questions (at least in the West) about North Korea's policies and leaders. We then shift into defectors' narratives, along the lines of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (which is so so much better--read that!). We downshift into interview transcripts of more defectors, and it starts to feel like he just got lazy/sloppy or just ran out of time as we just read interview after interview. He has some organization about which interviews he includes when, but the structure is weak and he should've just made his arguments using snippets of interviews as evidence...or just let them tell their stories. It was a poorly executed hybrid. We then start a brief section of speculation as to what the future holds for the Korean peninsula, who Kim Jong-Il's successor will be (this was published in mid-2000s), and what the US, South Korea and Japan should do to reduce the risk of war. This was all very weak, felt much like an afterthought and detracted from the book.

If he had focused on any one of these, he could've produced a good piece of work. Well, actually, I think the history of North Korea was pretty good...perhaps where he spent the majority of his time (certainly so if you judge by number of citations...several early chapters had more than 100 citations per chapter...which fell of dramatically in the later sections). I might've given this early section (~300 pages' worth?) a 4 star rating, the well-crafted defector narratives 3 stars and the rest just 2 stars. So it kind of averages out to 3.

I'm not sure why he did it this way. He could've had several books, spaced them out, probably gotten paid better if he had just broken them up into more digestible pieces. As it is he spent 13 years on an unfinished book.

Okay, but I did learn some interesting things:

- Kim Song-ju was Kim Il-sung's birth name
- good quotation from a defector that I think sums up DPRK: "Of course, we have people who dissent; that's why we have police" (p. 15)
- There were many ethnic Koreans who repatriated to DPRK in the 60s (e.g. from japan). They were a little disappointed with the direction their lives took. I really liked Chong Ki-Hae's story, for example.
- Kim Jong-il is rumored to be responsible for his younger brother's death...'accident' while 'playing around' in a pond. His brother drowned. when KJI was 6, brother was 4.
- There's an enormous unfinished 105-story hotel in Pyongyang (evan told me about that before)
- During the floods in South korea in 1984: DPRK offered rice to help and was shocked when ROK took it. contributed to malnutrition/famine, then got far worse in the 90s.

And given my frustration with all of this, my nit-picking antennae were up. Here are some highlights of what I found:
- more bad ebook hyphenation, missing hyphens, inserted hyphens (I don't know if this is nook in particular or a common ebook problem, but it looks like the book text comes in with hyphenation from line breaks and then in the ebook conversion they frequently get fouled up when those hyphenated words end up in the middle of a line...hyphens get left in the middle of words, two words usually hyphenated get concatenated, or a word suddenly has a space in the middle of it)
- there was at least one missing/broken footnote (the superscript number is there, no link. footnote text is there, but collapsed against previous note)
- bad blockquote indentation in interview transcripts. if an answer had more than one paragraph, 2nd and subsequent paragraphs often double-indented. looked terrible.
- spelling, e.g. 'forbibly' and at many doubled letters... (e.g. miilitary p.643, unlimiited p.650, meee p.649, borrrowed p.705, skiiing p.714)
- he had this "i thought about fleeing from DPRK" moment while visiting the DMZ at the beginning. it was forced, injected himself into a history, silly. He even brings it up again later (p. 406), implying he could identify with a defector's experience while in political prison as a result
- inappropriate and unnecessary dave barry reference: teacher telling that they were taught to watch student Kim Jong-Il's eyes, so that if he got bored, something needed to change...quoted dave barry to say "i am not making this up"
- some odd/creative constructions: "peddled anecdotes", "retailed anecdotes"
- Chongryon is mentioned well before he says what it is (p. 398)
- tries to take credit for Kim Jong-Il not traveling much outside country by giving bad review to a documentary of his trip to China...
- "fish row" (roe) p. 463
- made big deal (mentioned several times) about gold watches on defectors' wrists. so what?
- refers to a map of which counties could be visited by inspectors at one point, but doesn't include the map in the text. It would've helped, as he kept referring to the map, people were pointing, discussing the different colors used to mark the counties. Then he went on and on about the 'mystery' of why certain counties were excluded, proposed a sinister hypothesis and then found no evidence for it.
- a footnote that was misplaced (clearly didn't refer to the right text), another without the actual citation (maybe just had the article title?)

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't realize how HUGE this book was when I got it, but I decided to give it a go. I couldn't put it down. I've always been hungry for more information about North Korea. This book satisfied many of my curiosities, but more impressively, opened up many other areas of interest I would like to study in relation to North Korea. It's also a good mix of interviews, anecdotes and straight-up facts. Not sure this is a 5-star book for everyone, but it was for me.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite being flawed in certain aspects, Martin's work is an interesting one. Even though it brings us "new" information from the northern wasteland of the Korean peninsula, at times I found this book hard to read. Is the DPRK totalitarian? Certainly. Is the DPRK's economy dead? Without question. These questions were never in doubt. To this, I feel Mr. Martin has only added a level of gossip as to why this has occured. Are defectors testimonies important? Certainly. However can a junior officer's stories on rumours floating around the DMZ about Kim Jong Il be trusted as fact? Absolutely not. Time and again I found myself frustrated that A) more time wasn't spent on high level defector's information and B) more background information on his interviewees wasn't published so proper bias couldn't be obtained. As one other review here has mentioned, it was surprising that footnotes were in this book at all. I feel that the poster felt shocked as they did not feel this would be such an academically strict book. I on the otherhand felt that there was nothing new in this book that could be cited to begin with and therefore were never needed. It was especially surprising that in some instances he even took North Korean propaganda as the basis of fact. In addition to this, his "memos" to the Kims at the end of the work destroyed what little credibiltiy Mr. Martin had left.

Mr. Martin's problem from the outset is he thought he could take what would've made good news (he would've been right) and turn it into a 700 page scholarly work. In the end, he proved that any such endeavour would be a complete failure. The reason for this is not his fault. In the final section of the book he comments on Kim Jong Nams eventual succession to the throne. Of course with hindsight we now know Kim Jong Eun will succeed Kim Jong Il. With the information Mr. Martin had at the time this would've been easily the best guess one could muster. However, this is the problem in and of itself. Almost no information that comes out of North Korea is correct. The correct information that does come out of the Hermit Kingdom can also change in a moment's notice. That's just life in dealing with a despotic and truly authoritarian dystopian nation where most people don't even know man has landed on the moon. The sad fact of the matter is that, as was the case with the Soviet Union, the only real information we will ever see out of North Korea is when the regime collapses. Until then only best guesses can be applied.

Until such time, I fully recommend readers to turn elsewhere. I cannot recommend enough Barbara Demick's work "Nothing to Envy." The refreshing aspect of this works is that it actually makes no assumptions. It follows the lives of defectors in North Korea until their decision to defect and their life after making that journey. It remains a very personal work dealing with personal experiences and is exceptionally well written. Furthermore, the author does not make wild guesses as to what is happening inside the palaces of the Kims or who has the audacity to take over power based on information that most people dealing with North Korea should know to be spurious.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months ago, I reread 1984 and wondered whether such a society could survive. The answer is yes. Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il have done it. The personality cult is indeed a cult. It's like the whole nation is David Koresh's compound. We are not going to know the full truth about North Korean life until it falls, but until that happy day, Martin has set the standard for books about this crazy country. He has synthesized everything from the ghost-written memoirs of Kim Il-Sung to the testimony of former concentration camp prisoners to produce a definitive study that delves into everything from teenage gangs to the sex life of Kim Jong-Il to future prospects for North Korea. He reaches the depressing conclusion that Kim Jong-Il might indeed be the North Korean Gorbachev, which tells you a lot. Cinephiles will be interested in how Kim Jong-Il got his start in running North Korean film (and opera, too).

[Amanda Van Parys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this beast, and yeah, it was worth it.

[Abbe]

From

Under different circumstances, North Korea could be the subject of a Marx Brothers satire, with the elements of a pompous, ego-driven patriarch, a worshipful population, and a general aura of fantasy and illusion. But North Korea has a superbly equipped million-man army and an expanding nuclear weapons program. So this comprehensive examination of this totalitarian society and the two men who have dominated it is often terrifying. For a quarter century, Martin has covered North Korea while working for the Baltimore Sun, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. Using newly available material from Russian and Chinese sources, Martin offers surprising insights into the career and character of both Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il. He strives, albeit with moderate success, to unveil the reality from the mounds of myth and distortions with which both men have surrounded themselves. But Martin's account is most chilling in his descriptions of contemporary North Korean society. And yet, as Martin eloquently illustrates in this important book, the control of the Kim dynasty may well be tenuous. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"_Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader_ is, from all I have read, simply the best book ever written about North Korea. Relying largely on extensive interviews with defectors, Martin portrays North Korean life with a clarity that is stunning, and he captures the paradoxes in North Korean public opinion."--Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Review of Books

"Martin's massive book provides as useful a set of insights into life in North Korea as can be found anywhere."
- L.A. Times Review

"As an AP correspondent covering South Korea in the 1970s, I learned quickly how difficult it was to discover any reliable information about that secretive, threatening regime to the north. Brad Martin's book is testimony to the thoroughness of his work, and the high level of his ability as a journalist and researcher.

" North Korea is one of the least known, least understood countries in the world. Its leaders have always been enigmas, both frightening and fascinating, but almost impossible to decipher. Again today, it becomes vitally important that we do both, yet there is almost nothing of importance being written about the subject. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is important, as well as fascinating. The research is impeccable, the writing excellent. This is a major and timely contribution, and essential to anyone who hopes to deal sensibly with a vital region of the world."
-Terry Anderson, former AP correspondent and author of Den of Lions

"Brad Martin's Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, a careful, penetrating analysis of North Korea, is more than just a book. Given the levels of secrecy which surround the Pyongyang regime and the danger it poses to its neighbors, Martin has rendered a considerable service to us all."
-bestselling author, David Halbertstam

"Brad Martin's book on North Korea is at once enlightening and frightening. It is lucid in writing, balanced in analysis, and comprehensive in its meticulous research and anecdotal evidence. The detailed exposition of the narrow life of luxury and the devious character of the 'Dear Leader,' Kim Jong-il, is scary. So is the description of North Korea as a corrupt, secretive, stagnant fief of the Kim family. Brad Martin, with his long years as a Pyongyang-watcher, is eminently qualified to write a book that should strip away any illusions America and the West have about Kim's dangerous regime."
-Richard Halloran, former correspondent for The New York Times in Asia and Washington, D.C.

[Fran]

Probably the authoritative book on North Korea as it is so detailed and thoroughly researched. I thought it took a really balanced approach to what is such a complex issue and things were always analysed within the cultural context of Korea and with defector testimony at the forefront. My only criticism is that there were some descriptions about women which were not necessary... it's so jarring to be reading a neutral academic book and then there suddenly being a page-long description of the author basically objectifying the female defector he was interviewing

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting read. Unfortunately, it lacks structure. The author jumps back and forth from biographies of the Kims, history of North Korea, observations and reflections from his journeys, interviews with refugees and anecdotes. Most of the chapter titles don't tell you anything at all about what the chapter is going to be about. Generally, the book follows a chronological order, but I found that there are many things in between that I was not very interested in and had rather skipped. Given the many details and anecdotes, the book ends up being too long. All the more necessary is it to give it a clear structure and clear chapter titles to allow you to focus on reading what is the most interesting to you. Instead, the author leaves you in the dark with his lack of structure and focus and useless chapter titles.

However, the book is quite well researched. The author has traveled to North Korea several times and combines the knowledge he gained there with academic research and interviews with refugees/ defectors and others - including Western diplomats and officials who know half-brothers of Kim Jong-il.
Martin does not only give you the background knowledge and his anecdotes, but also addresses many important questions, such as: Why did NK under-estimate the ability of the South and the US to counter its invasion? Why did policy not change after it failed so clearly? Did the Kims not know about the situation on the ground? Or did they not care?

Generally, I found the way Martin makes sense out of what he saw in North Korea not as compelling as the approach taken by Myers in the book "The Cleanest Race". Martin seems to generally focus on sympathy with common North Koreans and their exploitation by a parasitic and ignorant ruling elite. Myers gives you a whole new approach on how this propaganda works, how North Koreans see themselves and why they will not give up nuclear weapons.

After all, it is a good read. I think that a clear structure and useful chapter titles are a must for a book of more than 700 pages, but if you're not bothered by this, you might still want to buy this book.

[Jeff Russo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book, albeit with a few flaws that keep it off my list of elite-level nonfiction. This is a topic I've wanted to learn more about for a while and certainly filled in some gaps in my historical and cultural knowledge.

As far as the nit-picking:

- I don't usually call for books to be shorter, but this one could have used a bit of trimming. I certainly wanted to read interviews with defectors, but there were so many of them that it started to become repetitive.

- I tend to like my big nonfiction to be somewhat impersonal; the author inserted himself into the narrative more than I'd like.

- There were some strange inconsistencies in style, e.g. a bunch of interviews are related in narrative form then others are just dumped as straight Q&A interview transcripts.

- The book wanders off a bit from a straight chronological organization, particularly from the Korean War to the early 1990s. This may or may not bug you.

Still, if you want to commit the time and wade in there's a lot to like.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good informative book about North Korean history, economy, politics and especially the Kim family up to the year 2004. It gave me many insights, I had not had before. It also thoroughly tried my patience. The first seven to ten chapters seemed to drag out endlessly in a much too detailed description of the Korean War and the utterly irrelevant experiences of the author's uncle as an American soldier in it. Add to that a much too detailed account of Kim Il-sungs early life as a partisan fighter in China with frequent sprinklings of anecdotes straight out of Kim Il-sungs autobiography. I found it quite hard at times to keep track of the overall important events of the Korean War and to separate actual facts of Kim Il-sungs life from his own propaganda tales.

After that my reading enjoyment improved very much however. I feel I have a much deeper understanding now of how the Kim family shaped the country and why North Korea acts like it does towards the outside world. All in all a must read, even if you have to work for the information sometimes.

[Dillon Font · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is THICK and even at my pace, I'm only 650 pages through in about 3 weeks of reading.

Regardless of whether you know/have an interest in Korea/Asia, the details it discusses on a closed, hermetic regime is a fascinating read

[Matt Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every five to ten years, the world finds itself in dire need of an expert on North Korean history and politics.

Such was the case in 1994, when war threatened to break out between the U.S. and North Korea over the latter’s nuclear weapons development program (a summit meeting between former President Jimmy Carter and Kim Il-sung resulted in a deal that temporarily reduced tensions).

Such was the case in 2000, when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with Kim Jong-il to discuss mothballing the North's ballistic missile program (the meeting was substantive, but no deal was reached).

Such was the case in 2006, when North Korea tested a nuclear weapon (confirming that their adherence to the 1994 disarmament deal was, in modern parlance, fake news).

Such was the case in 2009, when former President Bill Clinton negotiated the release of American journalists being held in captivity by North Korean government.

Such was the case in 2011, when the second generation of Kim leadership gave way to the third.

And such is the case today, days after President Donald Trump hastily agreed to a face-to-face meeting with North Korean leadership.

Then and now, you’re likely to hear from Bradley K. Martin – who is as close to an expert on the Hermit Kingdom as one can be. A long-time print journalist for The Baltimore Sun, the Asian edition of The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and other publications, Martin has made four trips to North Korea as a credentialed reporter (1979, 1989, 1992 and 2005).

His intrepid reporting took him beyond the (by North Korean terms) cosmopolitan borders of Pyongyang and into more remote regions of the country – where very few outsiders are allowed to roam. His observations, plus information gleaned from countless interviews with defectors, Korean government officials and other NoKo watchers are compiled into “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” – a cinderblock-sized tome that chronicles the history of North Korea and the first two generations of the Kim dictatorial dynasty.

“Under the Loving Care” is, beyond question, the top of the mountain as far as North Korean history books are concerned. Published first in 2004 and slightly revised in 2006, it remains the most comprehensive scholarly examination of the Kims – mainly because no other objective journalist has managed to out-access Martin. But they don’t call North Korea the “Hermit Kingdom” for nothing – there are limitations on what it means to be an expert in this field.

For instance, when Martin published his book in the mid-2000s, Kim Jong-il was still firmly in power and his successor was unknown. Jong-il himself had outlasted and outwitted other brothers from other mothers to inherit the dictatorship from his father, Kim Il-sung. Martin was not alone in assuming that Jong-il’s oldest son from his first wife – Kim Jong-nam – was likely to wind up following in his father’s footsteps as North Korea’s next autocrat.

Jong-nam’s only serious competition (these transitions tend to be phallocentric in nature) were his two younger male stepbrothers – Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un. Jong-chol had two strikes against him in that he was awfully young and (apparently) too feminine for his father’s tastes. Even further down the totem was Kim Jong-un, who was even younger than Jong-chol and, according to insiders, too “ferocious” and inhumane to be considered for the role of dictator. Who knew one could be too inhumane to qualify as a serious candidate for dictatorship?

Of course, history – particularly recent history – has a tendency to come at us in curveballs. Jong-nam lost his father’s favor after an ill-fated trip to Japan that involved falsified passports and a planned excursion to Tokyo’s Disneyland, as well as some other impudent behavior involving guns and nightclubs and coffeehouses. Jong-un became the successor-in-waiting in 2010 and assumed the mantle of leadership on December 17, 2011, days before Jong-il’s death.

As a fitting end to this chapter of palace intrigue, Jong-un then allegedly authorized the audacious assassination of Jong-nam, which took place in 2017 in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at the hands of two young women armed with VX nerve agent.

So, yes, it’s not easy – perhaps it's impossible – to be an expert on North Korea.

Still, Martin does a fabulous job re-telling and analyzing the history of this insular nation, beginning with the brutal reign of the Japanese in 1910, to the split between North and South following World War II, to the Korean War of the late 1940s and 1950s and the subsequent consolidation of leadership under Kim Il-sung, to the continuation of autocratic rule under Kim Jong-il.

Along the way, he explains how the North Korean commitment to “juche” (basically, self-reliance) was initially successful as postwar North Korea developed at a slightly quicker pace than their southern neighbors. And then he chronicles how hubris and mismanagement eventually led to famine, economic stagnation and increasing separation from the rest of the world (not to mention, from reality itself.)

Relevant to today’s news cycle, here are some takeaways from Martin’s 719 pages of historical narrative and context:

- One, at various points during the past several decades, North Korea has been both written off as a doomed, soon-to-collapse state, and hopefully portrayed as open to modest reforms and foreign engagement. Present-day indications of either outcome must be tempered by this historical context. In short, we’ve been here before and nothing much has changed.

- Two, North Korea’s nukes are likely going nowhere -- for two reasons. First, the nuclear warheads provide a deterrent against U.S. military action in the area. In the olden days (1994 to 2017), the deterrent was that a provoked North Korea would unload its nuclear payload on Seoul, causing millions of casualties. Now, of course, we know that the regime has developed ICBMs that can reach American soil, making the nuclear threat much more serious and direct. Second, in the event that the Koreas reunify, nukes give the North leverage in negotiating their representation within a new, combined government. So it seems rather fanciful to believe that anyone, much less a bombastic Donald Trump, is going to be able to convince the North Koreans to part with their atomic security blanket.

- Three, speaking of bombasticness, North Korean leaders do not respond well to threats – and they definitely do not respond well to physical insults. George W. Bush reportedly referred to Kim Jong-il as a “pygmy” – which didn’t win Korean hearts and minds. And no one needs a refresher on the nature of the insults lobbed at Kim Jong-un by President Trump via Twitter. The North Koreans tend to respond best to serious, mature overtures, if they respond at all.

In short, what we learn from Martin’s book is that it’s a safe bet to assume that nothing much will change in North Korea in the short term – and that any direct talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, if they take place, will likely lead nowhere.

But, as Martin illustrates in his failed prediction of who would succeed Kim Jong-il as the newest incarnation of The Dear and/or Great Leader – North Korea remains largely unpredictable. And Kim Jong-un in particular is an unknown quantity. The trend in the North over the past few decades has been one of opening – albeit very a slow opening. At some point, the flow of outside information into the country will be uncontrollable and the Kims’ house of cards will come crashing down at the hands of the people they have long oppressed.

Let us hope that, as the tipping point approaches, the attitude within the country is different from what it was in the mid-1990s when Jong-il was at the height of his power. At that time, Jong-il’s father (the country’s founding leader/dictator) asked his son what would happen in the event North Korea went to war with the outside world and did not win?

Kim Jong-il reportedly told his father, “If we lose, I would destroy the world.”

[Dominika · Rating 5 out of 5]

2 months of reading, this book was so good! I enjoyed every bit of it, and even if some say it should've been divided, this only brings into completion the years spent on gathering the material by author.
Historical part, then some political background is backed with defectors interviews - this is a lot to digest . I am amazed by the amounts of the information packed in this book.
I admit the fact author did not want to antagonize North Korea. Readers are free to analyze the stories, take their own opinions into the mix and learn more about the topic overall. Created in 00s, the book is also leaving the Kim Jong-ils successor topic open to interpretation, which is interesting knowing the current facts.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting but uneven account of the post-WWII history of North Korea and the Kim regime. The author has had extensive exposure to the North Korean government and has a lot of keen insights into how the government functioned or didn't function.

[Verba Non Res]

próximamente

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review
4 stars
Good, but QUITE lengthy
***********************

After reading this book of the history of The Kim Dynasty (aka, North Korea), my first and last thought is: I can't believe that this happened/is still happening. It seems like the events as described in any Holy Book (take your pick which one) are more probable to have occurred than these.

It's an extremely long book, and now I see why it sat on my shelf for over four years before I got a chance to sit down to read it. (Andrei Lankov's "The Real North Korea" is an excellent choice to read right along with this one.)

37 chapters over about 707 pages of prose, which works out to a nice easy 19 page-average-per-chapter.

The text is extremely heavily sourced. The notes for the chapters are 132 pages long (pps 715-847), and substantial amounts of the book are the author interviewing actual defectors. I come up with (by sampling) somewhere in the vicinity of 2,244 sources.

The author has actually been to Korea several times and met with more important members of the government/ dozens of North Korean defectors--presumably in Korean.

Martin alternates between attempts to be even-handed and present his case with a minimum of judgment and heaping scorn on the Kim Dynasty.

For such a most bizarre regime (one of the type where the government hires its its own hagiographers), it seems like it would be a fool's errand to try to go backwards and separate reality from The Party Line / fiction by combing through all of the documents (declassified and otherwise) written at different points in time.

But, Martin tries to do it nonetheless. And does not too badly, at all.

What I conclude from this *very* long book is that:

1. Kim Il-sung actually was a revolutionary who was on the front lines. (And in that way, he is very different from people like Robert Mugabe who co-opted a revolution in which they actually didn't participate.)

Both of the Kims profiled here had skills that kept them in charge of the country for many decades.

-The older Kim had something like charisma.

-The younger Kim was an excellent filmmaker / propagandist.

2. The Fatherly Leader was actually a very apt student of the church. And, all of the rituals that he learned as an organ player at his parents church were just repurposed when he was able to create his own personal fiefdom. Grace before meals thanking Providence were repurposed to be Grace giving thanks to the fatherly leader. homes had pictures in them, and whenever people received gifts from the state they could bow and thank Kim il-sung in the same way that they would bow in front of a holy relic.

3. Almost everything about the formation of either of the Koreas seems like a cosmic accident.

-It just so happens if there were huge empires like China and the Soviet Union that needed a buffer state.

-It just so happens that Korea was invaded hundreds of times throughout history, and they needed a person who could give them a strong national identity.

-It just so happens that Japan had them as a colony and then lost them at the end of WWII to people who split up the country in just *that* way (Americans and Russians).

-It just so happens that there were a lot of Koreans in the diaspora that lived in Russia for several generations that adopted those ideas. (And they became a useful bridge later on.)

-It just so happens that Kim il-sung was in proximity to the Russians when they wanted to choose a leader of a country that they wanted to create in their own image.

-It just so happens that the Russians set up the propaganda machinery that Kim needed to make himself a god to the new nation.

4. The undertaking of the Korean war is portrayed as a huge comedy of errors and miscalculations. (Basically the result of too much Game Theory.) And even then, the motivations of all of these Long Dead people are only speculation, and not proof.

5. We know that when leaders can write their own history books, that they will not tell things quite right. But what we found out from this book is that the process of getting the "story" right happened over the space of several decades. And verdicts on historical events changed many times, and without much embarrassment before arriving at the Official Version of Events.

6. It's not mentioned specifically in the book, but there are resonances of leaders making themselves into "God" in many other places. And in that sense, the Kim dynasty is very much old wine in new bottles.

-The Brahmin caste in India
-The priestly caste in Tibet
-The priestly caste of Temple Judaism
-The Yangban hereditary noble class of Ancient Korea
-The Chinese god-king and (all his relatives)
-The Thai Royal Family.

7. The religious overtones show up again and again in the book.

-People acting in Kim Il-Sung's presence the way that they might at a revival meeting.

-The fact that so many of these North Korean defectors find some other type of religion, such as Evangelical Christianity when they arrived in South Korea. (p. 269)

8. There are a lot of knock on questions about the nature of statecraft, and particularly military preparedness.

-What good does it do to have a huge and fearsome army if you are willing to negotiate with terrorists that capture a few of them? (USS Pueblo Incident).

-What sense does it make to bind your own feet with all of these more restrictions if you cannot rely on your enemy to do the same thing?

-What are some of the destructive ways that a military is most likely to be hamstrung when they are run by civilians--especially civilians that live in an echo chamber?

-If the only thing that's possible to do perfectly is nothing: is neutrality and non-alignment (à la Singapore and Switzerland) a better strategy? (How many wars has the United States had with the Muslims, and they have moved not one week out of mental habits that are more appropriate for the 7th century.) Wouldn't that be the best approach to take with North Korea? If you believe that it will collapse under its own weight, it just might take two or three centuries. And that's fine, given that we know the learning process can be very slow.

9. So many of these communist regimes set up in similar places.

-Recently feudal (Vietnam, China, Korea), and with populations that had many centuries of experience of Gd and the King being one and the same.

-With leaders who want to try to populate the world with their own offspring. (Fidel Castro had 11 kids of his own. Nobody knows how many children at the senior Kim had. Mao Zedong tried to mount everybody in China, even though he didn't have quite that many children.)

-With uneducated / semi-literate populations.

10. Whatever these leaders have, it's just never enough.

-The Father and Son Kims set up harems of thousands of women. (And then when that was not enough, they had Russian prostitutes / dancers brought in).

-Over a hundred palaces? (That works out to something like 3.6 nights per year per palace.)

-Their rice was sorted one single grain at a time.

11. How long can something like this go on? On the ones hand: Countries cannot stay in a permanent state of revolution. So, Practical Men of Action had to consolidate revolutions in order to get about the business of managing a state. (Vietnam, China, South Korea, etc.) But on the other hand: All the predictions about the demise of the regime have been wrong--even among the defectors who saw it first-hand.

12. What is suffering but knowledge of suffering? It seems like there can be many people who starve to death, as long as they don't know that other people don't necessarily live that way.

13. I would have to say my biggest "WTF?" Moment came right at page 575. An agriculture minister is executed by firing squad. And then his (already dead!) predecessor is exhumed and "ritually executed" a second time???

Other thoughts:

1. Only 20% of Koreans are named Kim, but it seems like 150%. (Were there even more than 5 people in this book who did not have the same surname?)

2. The decision of certain countries to try to sanction North Korea into changing its behavior is sound in logic but lacking in insight. Trade would be the best way-- even just a little bit.

It is long knownable (and known) that "The frustration of a man is greater when he has some and wants more than it is when he has nothing and wants some."

Trade would be a great way to accomplish the first case instead of the second.

3. There really are MANY historical lessons here for all of these "Communists" that exist at Western universities.

i. It has been spoken before (Eric Hoffer) that: "The tragic figures in the history of a mass movement are often at the intellectual precursors who live long enough to see the downfall of the old order by the action of the masses."

And that is how many times in this book. Many of the defectors were military men. (One in particular served for 24 years in the military.) And one of them was even a person who developed much of Juche thought.

ii. People can think anything subject to feedback from reality. There are no Communists left in China. But plenty in American academia. Koreans who live in Japan stayed radical and left wing, but the ones that demonstrated their doxastic commitment North Korea went there and starved to death or lived the life of "class enemies" because of their overseas background

4. The future is the past. This book was published in 2004, and through earlier periods (right after the Korean war, and for the next two decades when per capita income in North Korea was higher than in the South) and later periods (this or that special economic zone, or this or that engagement), there was so much hope for some type of change or some type or takeoff by the Kim Dynasty.

And it all came to naught.

To be honest, even though this book was written over 15 years ago it is replete with resonances to Donald Trump's visit to North Korea. And they, too, thought that North Korea was on the verge of a "big change." (And this was even under a different Head of State.)

And it's essentially come to nothing.

This is not the first time that some autocratic government has chosen under development with complete control rather than more development, but with less control.

5. The words "revisionist" / "imperialist" have to be the most overused words in the English language after reading this book.

6. At least two other books that I have read on this topic ("The Cleanest Race" by Bruce Meyers and the Andrei Lankov book aforementioned) I've concluded that North Korea is actually very much an extremely ethno-nationalist state. If you did not know about that perspective, you would not have found it from this book.

Verdict: One star subtracted for the book's extreme length. Recommended at second hand price.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the other book recommended to me at the same time as The Cleanest Race, but it took me much longer to get to just because of its size. Almost a thousand pages, though admittedly with nearly a hundred pages of footnotes, took a bit for me to work up to, but I'm glad I did and I recommend this book to anyone whose view of North Korea is formed mostly by Best Korea memes and pictures of Kim Jong-il looking at things.

The main impression that Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader gave me is that for all North Korea's claims of being the vanguard of the people's revolution spirit, it's actually just another occurrence of the oldest large-scale governmental type on Earth--the Mesopotamian god-king. At the top is the god-king, the descendent of Heaven, and he is surrounded by his relatives, who also have high positions by virtue of their divine blood. Below them are the nobility--in the Korea context, high ranking Party members and military leaders--which under Kim Jong-il has become more of a warrior aristocracy. Below them are the common people, and below them are the field slaves, composed of political prisoners.

And "Political prisoners" has a hugely expansive definition in North Korea. The policy of "three generations of punishment" means that a single crime can send an entire family to the internment camps or prevent them from ever getting a good job or university position. Much of the book is interviews with defectors, and the constant refrain in their testimony is that a single careless remark, or a single action taken in haste, or the behavior of a parent or child, or even simple descent from pre-revolution landowners or the yangban nobility, locked the defector out of ever being more than a poverty-stricken farmer, so they fled the country. Which means that their family became guilty by association and probably ended up in the camps.

Actually, looking at the wikipedia article on the yangban, it seems like the Kims have basically recreated feudal Korea, just with themselves at the head. Some revolution.

That comparison was the most interesting part of the book for me, because much of the rest of it is just information that we already know. North Korea's economy is a complete mess, the country went through a terrible famine in the 90s where millions starved, the seemingly-insane actions of the leaders are actually calculated to create an impression of a dangerously unstable regime that must be appeased lest they nuke Seoul, all of these are common knowledge, or at least they seem so to me and so reading multiple interviews where these facts were repeatedly touched on slowed my reading considerably.

The other problem is that Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader tries to be multiple books at once. It's about the lives of defectors and what caused them to defect, but no individual defector is dealt with for very long and the end effect is more of a wall of misery and large-scale disenfranchisement, which is a good description of North Korea but lacks a personal touch that made me want to read another story of someone who fled after they said that South Koreans have cool watches and thus were banned from all the good jobs forever and ever. It's also a history of the Korean War, which is definitely an important part of Korean history, but it focuses a lot more on the actions of the U.N.Americans in the war than it does on Kim Il-sung's actions. It's a history of the Kim dynasty, but most of the official history is lies, Kim Il-sung's biography is full of lies, and his memoirs are also lies and most of the later volumes of his memoirs were published by his son, who obvious has his own motives.

The end result is that the book tries to do too much and ends up not really doing anything all that well. The Cleanest Race is better on the subject of whether North Koreans actually believe all the ludicrous propaganda that the regime puts out (answer: "it's complicated"), and I have to assume that there are better books about defectors' lives or the Korean War out there. For sheer comprehensiveness it wins, but at the cost of long digressions, some rambling, and a lack of focus throughout much of the text. I'm not sad I read it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone else.

[Wayward Child · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something in the human psyche that makes the worst of humanity so… Appealing, for the lack of a better word, something that makes the macabre and the horrific and the inhumane so finger-licking titillating. We’re slightly ashamed, naturally, because we know these people we’re interested in investigating are either evil or mentally ill, the ones who don’t deserve the attention—and, in some cases, the glorification—we give them. I suppose it’s just the way we are. The human species will always be more interested in villains and will remember their names for far longer than their victims’.

I have watched and listened to an obscene amount of documentaries and podcasts about serial killers, tyrannical monarchs and dictators. The contemporary despots of the twentieth century all resemble one another and make use of similar strategies to consolidate their power. Yet, only one has managed to transfer his power and create a bona fide dynasty. That’s what makes the Kim family so intriguing. They’re the crème de la crème of dictatorships. It’s fair to say that’s the reason most of those documentaries and podcasts I mentioned centre on them and the reason I’m so fascinated by them and their hermit kingdom.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is an ambitious book, a mammoth, nine-hundred-page doorstop that’s taken me more than a month to read. It’s incredibly thorough and multifaceted, covering dozens of different topics pertaining to North Korea—the Kims themselves, the country’s history, geography, natural resources, climate, foreign relations, economy… At the centre of it all stands this, by all accounts, unremarkable family who rose to prominence and power through sheer ruthlessness and naked ambition.

Kim Il-Sung was a remarkable man in some ways and traces his origins back to the cradle of nearly all tyrants and dictators—freedom fighting. It’s no coincidence all these despots start that way. They usually hail from a nation oppressed by another country, a colony or a former colony that’s still suffering the consequences of its colonial past. They’re all idealistic young men who want something better for their fellow countrymen. They all read—and ultimately manage to pervert—Marxist-Leninist literature. They all rise to power as national heroes and liberators. Along the way, they get a taste of power and what it truly means to be in charge. They like it and they want more of it. Sadly, in the end, they turn into the very oppressors they once fought against. That’s the typical route to becoming a twentieth-century dictator, give or take a few elements.

Yet, Kim Il-Sung managed to pull off something remarkable, something unprecedented—he instituted an heir. At the time this book was published, Kim Jong-Il was about sixty. Since then, the world’s witnessed yet another succession. It’s gruesome and terrible and perversely admirable even, but this family’s managed to thrive and survive well into the third generation. If you’re wondering what it takes to pull that feat off, this book will spell it all out for you, down to the minutest detail.

Interspersed with the evolving history of the Kim family are defector testimonies and accounts of the lives of ordinary North Koreans. All throughout this book, I kept thinking “Those poor people, those poor people, those poor people…” The injustices they’ve been suffering for nearly eighty years now and continue to suffer to the present day are… I can’t think of an adjective that’s strong enough.

Near-constant power outages. Food shortage. Inadequate medicine, clothes, grains, infrastructure and apartments. Radioactivity-related workplace injuries. Forced prostitution. Forced marriage. Discrimination based on family background. And, worst of all, the inability to say anything about it.

There are shitty governments all over the world, but none as stiflingly oppressive as this one. Plus, the rest of us get to complain about our leaders. We get to watch talk-show hosts and comedians make fun of their ineptitude and openly criticise their corrupt behaviour. In North Korea, you have to be grateful for what little you have, no matter how insufficient or shoddy. You have to pay your respects to the very people who are robbing you blind, monitoring your every move, making you struggle with and die from preventable illnesses and teaching your children to report on your behaviour. Sure, the underwear and the appliances and the edibles may be of terrible quality, but you’re not to utter a single word that might suggest the nation’s products are anything but first-rate.

History has taught us that tyrants usually get overthrown by their own people, with or without the help of the international community. In North Korea, however, fear and indoctrination run so deep it’s unrealistic to think it would ever happen. Even the people who don’t buy into the self-aggrandising tales of the leaders’ personality cults are powerless to change their lot in life.

I cannot even imagine, nor do I want to, that level of multigenerational oppression, a psychological cage within your mind where facts and fiction start to blur, where you’re forced to live two separate lives as two separate identities, constantly on the watch because you know the slightest complaint will land you in a prison camp. And don’t even get me started on that chapter about the camps. My stomach was turning upside-down and inside-out the entire time.

It’s inconceivable that these men would sit back and watch their countrymen, their fellow humans, starve and struggle and not introduce a single change for the betterment of their lives if said change might threaten their regime. It’s equally mindboggling that they are able to sleep soundly with so many lives weighing on their conscience. To have the brazen audacity to start wars, kidnap people, rape young girls, work the peasants to death, play God… Those poor people, I find myself thinking again, forced to listen to a single, state-approved radio station and internalise the grandiose deeds of deities that never existed every single day, forced to abandon their natural state of human freedom and live and die within this regime, suffering indescribable pains, all for the sake of the ego and power of a handful of delusional elites who believe they’re somehow superior to the rest of us.

I’ve recently listened to a podcast that mostly centred on Jong-Il, but that touched on all three generations and the probable future of the country. I found myself somewhat unnerved by what one watcher said and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for days. Essentially, no one but the humanitarians wants to see the end of this regime, because no country in the world is willing or socially and financially able to deal with the lagging North Korean economy and the roughly twenty-five million North Koreans whose lack of modern skills and knowledge would end up burdening South Korea’s and other countries’ economies.

Despite what the world’s top leaders and politicians may publicly say about the catastrophic abuse of human rights in the DPRK, all they really want is an assurance the North won’t leverage their nuclear weapons against them. The prolongation of the status quo is a win-win for both the Kim family and other countries. As for the twenty-five million people living in constant apprehension without the slightest notion of genuine freedom… Well, I guess nobody really cares and that they’re going to have to continue living that way indefinitely.

All in all, if, like me, you’re one of those weirdos who like learning more about history’s worst tyrants and toughest regimes, this book is a must. So incredibly comprehensive, in-depth and unflinchingly objective about both the DPRK’s and other countries’ good, bad and ugly decisions.

[Tom M · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was an interesting look into many aspects of North Korea. The author presents a mostly non-biased view to all things North Korea.

Martin begins his book around roughly 1900 with early history of Kim Hyong-jik, the father of KIm Il-sung then proceeds with the history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. From there, the book bounces around from defector testimony of daily life, politics, matters of economy, and daily troubles of North Koreans from peasants to the elite. The reader is bound to learn new facts that they may have not know prior to reading.


Critiques: Reviewer D. Kauck from Amazon mirrors my opinion as far as critiques (paraphrased): "This is an interesting read. Unfortunately, it lacks structure. The author jumps back and forth from biographies of the Kims, history of North Korea, observations and reflections from his journeys, interviews with refugees and anecdotes. Generally, the book follows a chronological order, but I found that there are many things in between that I was not very interested in and had rather skipped. Given the many details and anecdotes, the book ends up being too long."

My specific critiques: I found the in-depth history of Kim Hyong-jik who is relevant in the Kim story (but not for 50 pages) a bit dull as well as the mundane aspects of certain areas of North Korea's day-to-day economy and politics. Also, because the book was first published in 2004 (and a new edition in 2006), many new developments have taken place. Of this writing (December 2010), the most notable news is the successor to Kim Jong-il and as of the last few days, the tensions (yet again) between the North and the South. The last 20 pages or so consist of Martin speculating who the successor could be as well as North Korea's future. Among the many names and people he mentions of possible successors, Martin actually hits on the person who, as of this writing, could be the next leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

Overall the book is an interesting read although a bit hefty at 705 pages with an additional 132 pages of notes. While I've had an interest in visiting North Korea for the last few years, after reading this book, I feel much more educated about their history and what goes on behind the scenes if I were to ever visit the last totalitarian regime on earth.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, comprehensive history of North Korea under the Kims. I'm kind of fascinated by North Korea, not least because so much of what people "know" about the country is based on guesswork and unreliable testimony. This is a long book, written over many years, and some parts are more interesting than others - all told, I felt like the parts about North Korea before Kim Il-Sung's death were more interesting than the later parts of the book about the 1990s famine and the greater economic freedom that followed. The stuff about how Kim Jong-Il was groomed for succession was particularly interesting. Sadly, Martin is not optimistic about Kim Jong-Un (the currently Leader) as a positive influence for North Korea, though it's not clear he has a lot of information to go on.

Martin writes in more of a journalistic style than a scholarly one, and you get a sense of his own personality and interest in the DPRK as you read - I especially liked his matter-of-fact explanations of the various ways he got into North Korea after having been blacklisted as a journalist for writing a negative review of a North Korean documentary (which I almost want to see, even though he makes it sound absolutely dire!).

Regardless of its occasional unevenness, this book is eminently worth reading. Check it out! If you're interested in North Korea but looking for something a little less exhaustive, try Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which looks at the lives of five North Korean defectors, or Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, a great graphic memoir by a French-Canadian animator working in the North Korean capital.

[Sarat · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. An informative look into the overall history of North Korea.

The author definitely did his research, especially into the era of Kim Il-sung, and it's interesting to see the large contrasts in leadership and governance between Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. This in a sense was quite unexpected, as we tend to get the impression that the both leaders operated and acted in a similar fashion when this really wasn't the case at all. I also appreciated the fact that he made an effort to reduce his level of bias, something that is understandably difficult when it comes to the subject matter.

There are some flaws within the book though. The book does become more tedious to read in the second half and the organization is also somewhat disjointed. The author tends to jump around from topic to topic, and does not really provide a clear, flowing connection in terms of timeline.

The biggest issue is mostly that the sources that the author uses are not wholly trustworthy. I don't hold this against him too much, as North Korea is called the 'Hermit Kingdom' for a reason, and he does acknowledge this issue repeatedly. However, he does also use some inconsistent sources like Li Zhisui (aka Chairman Mao's doctor), without this acknowledgement, and I found this to be somewhat irritating. The book also sometimes slips into outright gossip, especially when regarding the personal lives of both leaders which probably wasn't necessary.

Overall, the book is definitely entertaining for the most part. However, there are issues with the level of scholarship, and it does feel like the author attempted to do too much and rushed through some of his later research.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was probably straight up the most interesting book I've read on North Korea to date. It's also not at all academic, and maybe that's why. Bradley Martin compiles a couple decades of covering North Korea for various publications into a huge compendium of everything you'd want to know about the Kims and more. Because cult-of-personality Kim (both Il Sung and Jong Il) worship is pretty much the state-sanctioned religion of North Korea, Martin writes the story of the Kims as the story of North Korea. In reading, not only do you get the straight up history of the Kims (and by extension, North Korea) but tipping in at a little under 900 pages this books is full of really interesting, sometimes hilarious and often tragic anecdotes (I still can't decide if the stuff about the sexual proclivities of the Kims is more funny than tragic or more tragic than funny). There is also a couple chapters dedicated to testimony of North Korea's many defectors, the validity of which is debatable but Martin himself often comments on the subject.

The only thing I didn't like about this book were a few parts where Martin sort of wanders into fantasy. One is a verbatim account of what the author, Bradley Martin, would adivse Kim Jong Il to do as far as the management of the state apparatus. I mean, does anyone really care or is this just unnecessarily self-indulgent filler? Taking that into account, you wonder if this book couldn't have been trimmed down to a more palatable size (under 500 pages?). Still, if you are at all interested in what goes in the hermit kingdom, read this book.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew. I can't believe I finally finished this monster of a book!

It is 700+ pages of small font plus another 100+ of footnotes.
The book is written by an American journalist who has been to North Korea four times since 1979, and has lived much of that time in Asia. I chose this book (not having noted the length...) because I wanted to understand more about the Korean conflict, about the Korean war and how North Korea became so isolated. I was also interested in learning more about life under the Kims. This book delivers.

It starts with the background of the late "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung and ends in 2004 when it was unclear who would succeed Il-Sung's son Kim Jong-Il. The personality cult of Kim Il-Sung. Some of the reverence and deification was transferred to his son, Kim Jong-Il, but according to defectors, many citizens fear him more than revere him.

The parade of defector stories became, for me, a bit tiresome. I was interested in their stories... but after small snippets of interviews from about 40 of them, they all ran together. It was clear that those living under the Kim dynasty in North Korea are painstakingly isolated and live in paranoia and fear as they struggle to maintain even basic sustenance.

I am glad that I read it as I now have a working background regarding the issues North Korea faces as well as the issues the world faces with North Korea.
But also glad to be moving on to something a little lighter!

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is journalism not history.
Journalists write books based on interviews with liars. Historians write based on unreliable archives. In the case of North Korea, it is impossible to write history and one must rely on journalism.

Writing history on communist regimes is next to impossible. All forms of media are heavily censored. Statistics are falsified. Internal discussions amongst politicians are never documented. What journalists can do is interview defectors and this is exactly what Bradley Martin did for over 20 years before finally giving us this wonderful book on the Kim Dynasty which is the best thing currently available and may prove to be the best ever.

Martin presents the Kims as being evil (of course) but also very cunning, charming and extremely skilled in the art of politics as practiced in the communist countries. The North Korean regime made economic progress for 20 years before the effort went off the rails. Today the entire country lives in chronic malnutrition. It his hard to predict where the regime's dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship will end but what is sure that the people will game nothing.

Martin is to be commended for having gone to such a great effort over such a long period of time. His book is highly informative and he scrupulously points out every gap in his knowledge. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the bizarre land of North Korea.

[Scott Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is the most in-depth, well-researched, and comprehensive study I have read of the Kim Dynasty and North Korea. I spent 23 years with the CIA, many of those years following the regime, and can attest that there is so much propaganda, myths, and urban legends surrounding this nation and it's rulers that it is often impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. Bradley Martin has done a superior ob in doing just that. His research is impeccable, and I appreciate that with many of the more controversial subjects (such as the private lives of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader) he is honest about what can and cannot be verified.

My only criticism is that in some of the chapters which are reliant on defector interviews, in my opinion Bradley Martin used too many interviews. that were similar in nature, and that using less would have helped move the work along. However, this is a minor criticism; while the amount of interviews may slow down the pace, it does provide a deep understanding of the North.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is one of the best books written on North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. I hope Bradley martin intends to update it in the future to include Kim Chong-il's final days and the succession of Kim Chong-un.

[Amy Ransohoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is a very comprehensive book about the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Starting with Kim Il-Sung's childhood in China, it goes through the tail end of Kim Jong-Il's reign. It doesn't cover the current leader, Kim Jong-Un, but it is a great resource for the country's modern history up to the twenty-first century.

It's also a pretty long book; the author has a good voice and rarely drags his feet, but it can still get a little dry. Still, there was a lot of well-cited information that I had not seen in any other books about North Korea that I have read, and I think it's fair to say that this is probably the most comprehensive English language title about the country. But as a primer, I feel like it lacks something in that the enormous crimes of the regime are hidden behind baldly-stated facts and figures; Martin's neutral tone can feel a little bit too generous to the regime at times. As an introduction to the hermit kingdom, I'd recommend Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea as an easier to digest book with less emphasis on the country's high-ranking officials and more on the lives of the people who live there.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Martin puts his years of writing practice to good use as he pulls together research and first-hand interviews of North Korean defectors to give readers what appears to be a solid historical account of North Korea. Always engaging, he throws in moments of humor and warmth to make this book seem much shorter than it is. Though he easily could have reduced the number of interviews he adds, at times resorting to a clunky Q/A format, Mr. Martin's writing shines and makes this book a joy to read. His depictions of the Kim dynasty members are well crafted and feel legitimate, though who am I to say if they actually are or not. Partway through the book I became convinced that North Korea essentially is a huge gigantic cult, and as Mr. Martin does nothing to lessen that impression, I'm assuming it is his as well. As I read this book a decade after it was completed, I am very interested to read a revised edition that includes his analysis and defector interviews from the past decade, especially since the regime has undergone another radical change in leadership. Read this to learn about the Kim's, and in the end you likely will feel like you know them personally, thanks to the life Mr. Martin's writing takes on.