Customer Reviews

Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a fine work but a dreary and depressing one. That, I hasten to add, is because of the content and not because of the writing, which is solid and clear. North Korea is a truly strange and bizarre place, and Becker helps to explain not only how it came to be what it is, but also just how appallingly cruel (and spoiled and selfish) its rulers have been. He's also good on what we know about the military capacity of the country.

The indifference to suffering is not confined to the inhuman Kim and his even worse son (Kim Jong Il). China too deserves the world's condemnation for adopting a policy of returning (to a certain death) desperate, starving, dying people who have risked everything to beg on the streets of Chinese border cities. China has valued its influence over N. Korea over humanitarism, and obviously has no concern about the unfortunate denizens of what is literally a slave state.

North Korea is a preternaturally weird and bloodcurdlingly scary place. It's the only country in the world that is almost completely isolated from outside influences, filled with a literally shrinking (because of famine and starvation) population, and presided over by the one fat man in the entire land ... who not insignificantly is sitting with his pudgy, Roman Emperor-esque finger on the buttons of whole host of WMD, with the 20+ million inhabitants of (greater) Seoul held hostage just 35 miles from the DMZ and N. Korea's thousands of missiles, rockets and assorted artillery. Becker's good at describing a place that is stranger than fiction and far more savage: cannibalism, cronyism, corruption, and a callousness that beggars belief, plus nuclear ambitions. It's here in all its frightening 'glory'.

Overall, Jasper Becker provides a readable explanation of how North Korea came to be a self-starved country with a massive defense establishment. He covers the history of Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, their achievement of absolute control, and relationships with Russia, China, and America.

I did have problems with some statements Becker makes. He starts with a fictional scenario of a military confrontation with the U.S.: "On the bridge of the USS Kitty Hawk, Admiral Peter Grey watched the F-16 planes taking off . . ." The US Air Force is justifiably proud of the capabilities of the F-16 but they don't include the ability to fly from aircraft carriers. He describes the Chinese nuclear shelter efforts after the 1963 Cuban missile crisis: "Aircraft hangars, runways, submarines, and destroyers were all secreted deep inside mountain caves so that after a preemptive strike, Chinese forces could sally forth unscathed." Maybe they were very small flying submarines and destroyers that could zip out from the deep caves to the water? Becker confuses me when describing the North Korean nuclear program: "The Yongbyon reactor produced just 5 megawatts (MW) of fissile material . . ." by not explaining why fissile material is measured in megawatts instead of units of mass or radioactivity.

The book is worth reading as a contemporary history of the North Korean regime in spite of the distractions.

Jasper Becker's recent book, "Rogue Regime" is really two books in one. The bulk of it is a history and analysis of North Korea, revolving around its current leader, Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung. Authoritatively documented and seriously presented, Becker outlines a case against the world's most horrendous and brutal dictator. His prognostications, however, leave much to be desired.

In "Rogue Regime", the author spends chapter upon chapter relating the devastation that the Kims have brought to North Korea. In this regard, Becker has done a great service in reminding us what it is like to live in that totalitarian state. He looks at all angles.... political, social, economical and most of all, personal, citing defectors who have lived in North Korea over the years. He describes Pyongyang as a city which is almost Kafka-esque.....department stores that are open with nothing to buy and few shoppers, for instance. For a country that is closed to the outside world Becker opens it up, as much as he can.

To say that the author has a neo-conservative bent is an understatement. He castigates Presidents Carter and Clinton and relegates the United Nations to a role of an appeaser in the quest to figure out what to do with North Korea. While there is much merit to his arguments, the one-sided approach he offers is hardly convincing. Becker loosely addresses Iraq, largely supporting the U.S. effort there, but he then goes on to beg the question that so many people have asked over the course of the current Bush administration.....if North Korea poses the real threat to the United States, what are we doing in Iraq and why are we not doing anything militarily to take out the supposed sites in North Korea? It's a question that is posed but left unanswered.

I have reservations about this book but anyone who is curious to know more about North Korea should read it. Still, reading "Rogue Regime" is like driving down a highway without an exit ramp. The trip is worthwhile but it eventually just stops. One wishes that this book had been written a few years ago and that President Bush had read it. The fulcrum of the "Axis of Evil" might have been tipped in a different direction. While pointing the finger, Becker delivers no real solutions.

Jasper Becker's "Rogue Regime" was the first book I read about North Korea. It's certainly interesting, filling us in on lots of fun tidbits about Kim Jong Il: that he sleeps with young girls and then dumps them, builds himself palaces, and refuses to cut rations to anyone working on his nuclear weapons. But the book is extremely irritating in that it clearly has not been properly edited: as someone else pointed out, there are plenty of factual mistakes, stylistic mistakes, and at least one grammar or punctuation mistake for every five pages. The chapters are also annoyingly disorganized -- Becker jumps from a pointless hypothetical war between the United States and North Korea to a chapter about the history of the Kims, to a chapter about the North Korean nukes, and so on. I'm especially surprised at the inefficiency of such a publisher as Oxford -- laughingly, their best defense is to say that simply forgot to have it edited.

All in all, however, many people will argue that the book deserves a once through -- particularly for experts on North Korea. Personally, I'm glad I simply got it from the library.

Japser Becker is a courageous scholar and jornalist, not at all the neocon some reviewers have asserted. Formerly with the South China Morning Post, he left when that paper's increasing toadying to the Beijing regime grew oppressive. Becker continues on today at the prestigious Christian Science Monitor and continues to write about east Asia, as he has long done. His books "Hungy Ghosts" and "The Chinese" are definitive and widely respected.

Now Becker turns his talents towards North Korea, a ghastly rogue regime de facto ruled by communist monarch Kim Jong-Il, who norminally keeps his father's corpse as head of state. Becker's clear writing explains and describes this horrific necrocracy in depressing detail.

I followed North Korea for many years with the State Department and I can verify that Becker's information seems accurate and his sources seem excellent.

This book's only failing comes when Becker tries to prognosticate North Korea's future actions and prescribe proscriptive solutions to the "looming threat." Not that there is no threat, but Becker is only partially appreciative of the DPRK mindset and also is no expert on international policy. The sad truth is that there may be NO 'solution' to the problem of North Korea's WMD and erratic intentions. But Becker does get kudos for a clean dissemination of the alternatives and the realities of the situation.

'Rogue Regime'is a must read for it's excellent descriptions of the 'Juche Paradise' and it's loopy leader, the self-proclaimed 'greatest genius of humankind.' It is unsettling but accurate.

This is the worst book ever written on North Korea: ... that is, except, for all the rest. Had Becker not proceeded with his ideological blinkers in the "on" position, organized the book better, and had it edited more carefully, this could have been not just a good book, but perhaps a great one.

The history of the Kim regime given here is first rate, but the bizarre introduction with the barely credible scenario spinning of a nuclear attack from the north, stretches credulity and begs the question of what the kind of scholarship this book really was intended to be: Was it intended as be just another anti-North Korea polemic and screed, or was it intended as a piece of sound political science and history? For this reader at least, even at the end of the book that question remained an open one.

Since the Kim regime is such an exceedingly easy target to "pick on," painting a grotesque and depressing picture of that reality, is insufficient in itself to raise the book to the level of serious history or serious political science. However, carefully tracing the history of the development of the country of North Korea - as an afterthought of Stalinism - to Kim's "cult of personality" could not have been more informative, more revealing, or even better done.

Among other things, and certainly in deep relief, it demonstrates the utter artificiality of the concept of a nation state itself: The Kim Il Sungs, Stalins, Pol Pots, Saddam Husseins and Hitlers simply represent one end of a spectrum that begins with cults of personality and weakly justifiable racial ideologies and ends with less obvious and less transparent nations organized around equally tribal, economic and religious myths. Certainly the best of nations are different only in degree and not in kind from the monstrosity that is North Korea.

Once the book stops its implicit backhanded self-congratulatory stance of how great our Western democracies are in comparison to North Korea, and come to the full realization of how small the overall objective distance really is between these monstrosities and the best the nation-state has to offer, only then can we take a healthy and sober pause and say there is still work to be done, not just in the North Koreas of the world but in all of the "so called" free nations as well.

Three Stars

I'd like to emphasize the previous reviewer's comments. This is perhaps one of the most poorly organized books I have ever read -- fiction or non-fiction. It amazes me how this book got through the publisher's editor(s). The poor organization isn't limited to the chapters, but within each chapter, too. The author jumps from various interviews and first-hand accounts without any logical organization. Within a chapter, the book also jumps from the current president, Kim Jong Il, to his father back and forth multiple times. To me, chapters do not seem organized based on interviewee or time. Each chapter has a title, but things like "food" and "the military" are so interleaved, I think it was a poor choice for chapter headers.

However, the information about North Korea is enlightening, whether or not you have knowledge about the country. Since almost every sentence (except the first chapter) is a fact, and not every sentence is followed by a cite, expect some facts to be under dispute. With so little information coming out of NK, we have to take what we can get. In summary, if you don't mind the disorganization, this is worth a read. Just don't be surprised if you occasionally flip back a few pages thinking, "I've read this name before...".

If you want to read just one book on North Korea, make it this one. Becker draws on many sources to document a broad range of crimes and mismanagement by the North Korean government. He argues persuasively that human rights abuses are Kim Jong Il's biggest problem, not his nuclear weapons. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations to control his military ambitions, he needs to be held accountable for crimes against his own people.

The book is sobering, eye opening, and a must-read for anyone interested in North Korea.

I've read two recent books on North Korea, "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader" and this "Rogue Regime" book. The first one was good, and I can recommend it.

However, "Rogue Regime" was phenomenal. Becker illuminates the Kafkaesque nightmare that is North Korea in lucid prose. And it is a mesmorizing review. What makes it so fascinating is obviously the subject matter. Humanity is simply witnessing one of the most appallingly diabolical and corrupt regimes in history. Becker's accomplishment here was to capture the crushing insanity of it all. I have read this book twice now and some chapters four times. If you enjoy books covering historical and political events, this book should be at the top of your list.

One of the paradoxes of North Korea is that there is very little quality literature on the place. The books out there range from dated treatises to dry academic accounts that would put most readers to sleep. You'd think that a country as odd as North Korea would get more coverage, particularly because of the nuclear issue and its bellicose behavior.

Jasper Becker's "Rogue Regime" is like a breath of fresh air in this stale library. He writes very well and manages to do it in language and terms that people who aren't academics will find accessible and informative.

But the true merit of "Rogue Regime" is that it fills another gap in the literature about the DPRK. Becker is not afraid to call Kim Jong-Il and his regime something that is evil. Most of the literature that has recently appeared shrinks from doing this. Instead, such books argue about the need to "engage" with Kim Jong-Il in order to reach "a grand bargain" with him.

Such books suffer from a central flaw. They all seem to radiate the belief that if only the US is smart enough, diplomatic enough, or just "good enough" everything will be sunshine and roses for us in North Korea and other trouble spots in the world. Such a world view is breathtakingly naive because it refuses to admit that sometimes bad things can happen and evil can exist without having a "root cause" in the sins of America or the West. Kim Jong-Il and North Korea constitute such evil in my opinion.

This being said, Becker's book is not perfect. I think it could have been better sourced in some spots and the hypothetical scenario of a US attack on North Korea at the beginning of the book could have used some editing by someone more familiar with the US military. But those are minor things.

The bottom line is as Becker argues that there is a moral question we should not ignore when we treat with North Korea. I commend him for not letting the world forget that. I also find myself wondering why all the various "champions of the world's oppressed" like the benighted reviewer who condemned the book as "neocon gothick" are awol on the North Korean human rights issue. Maybe they're happier criticizing allies of the US for far lesser sins than what is going on in the DPRK.

***

Also, I'd like to respond to the allegation by the "neocon gothick" reviewer that the North Korean famine of the 1990s (aka "the Final March to Paradise" in regime-speak) was caused partly by the Japanese cut-off of funds from the Korean diaspora there in the 1993-1994.

First, not even the North Koreans blame the Japanese for helping to cause the famine. They blamed in on crop failures.

Second, even if the Japanese cut off of funds (which was by no means airtight) helped cause the famine, Japan was fully in its rights to block the transfer of money to a country that has consistently been hostile to it (abducting its citizens, violating its laws, etc).

Third, between 1996 and 2000, the US donated over 1.3 million tons of food to North Korea through the World Food Program. That's kind of strange behavior for a country that according to Mr. "Neo-Con Gothick" is trying to starve "poor little North Korea."