The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

. For anyone interested in the history and politics of North Korea, this is an essential read. Andrei Lankov is an expert, in the best sense of that word, on the history, culture, and politics of this rogue nation. He has lived in N. Korea, and has experienced it both first hand and at a distance, as a cultural and political analyst. His prose is clear and convincing, his arguments both analytic and sensitive.
Lankov explains how N. Korea took an increasingly extreme path in the form of Communist dictatorship, even after its allies, Russia and later China, opened up to a modified capitalist economic model. He describes the early economic success of the Kim family regime in the North, and how, over decades, what was viewed as an initial success story has deteriorated into a failed, petty dictatorship. (My observation: The cultural value structure of the Kim family regime is reminiscent of the decadent, pre-Japanese, almost medieval Yi dynasty.)
Lankov documents the N. Korean strategy of "aid-maximizing" through diplomacy and blackmail, and their persistent nuclear threat has served that end. Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of Communism, and of the Kim regime, a form of indentured servitude has become the lot of most North Koreans.
With the growing lack of substantial agricultural and manufacturing productivity, rations stopped being delivered to workers in the mid-1990s. Thus, the Korean population has resorted to individual enterprise and black-market economics, which the regime forcefully suppresses from time to time. Still, these seem to be essential survival strategies for the malnourished population, and officials are complicit. The whole political and social structure seems to be a web-work of lies and deceit. Efforts at currency reform have been disastrous.
At the turn of the millennium (during the two years I was in South Korea), there was a relative thaw in tensions between North and South. An industrial zone near the border of the two countries, funded by the South and employing workers from the North, was one positive outcome of that thaw.
For years, outsiders have hoped that reforms such as those that changed China, might happen in North Korea, as well. In the end, the author seems doubtful that such a relatively peaceful reform would be possible, since those in power stand to lose privilege and power were that to happen.
Lankov admits that "the current system is both unsustainable and unreformable," and he predicts that North Korea will end in a dramatic crisis. He offers several possible scenarios on how that might go down. But, he admits, "[T]he greater the gap between the North and its neighbors--above all South Korea--the greater the potential for a future explosion." And this is what everybody in the West fears, because Seoul is so close to the North.
Still, Lankov sees political unification of the Korean peninsula as a distinct possibility, and he has a chapter in which he provides rational and humane guidelines for a best-case scenario.
I pray that something like his sanity can prevail after the crisis of North Korean collapse. Let us hope that this small peninsula will not become the tinderbox that sets off WWIII.

I read this book to gain insight into North Korea for an upcoming novel I'm writing. It didn't just inform me about North Korea, it made me sympathize deeply with the North Korean people (and I don't mean it made me a supporter of the Kim's or the terribly inefficient government that has destroyed the freedom of its people) . Andrei Lankov shares expertly from his own experience of what living behind the curtain is like, painting an eye-opening picture as to why the regime operates the way it does and how Western countries can safely help in accelerating its inevitable fall.
It is well worth a read, you won't see North Korea the same afterwards.

I agree with the generally positive comments this book has received here and elsewhere. Anyone looking for an up-to-date and trenchant analysis of North Korea would be very well served by this volume.
My criticism is directed at Oxford University Press for their truly incompetent editing. I don't think there is a single paragraph that does not contain some grammatical error or stylistic howler--subject-verb disagreement, confused tenses, wrong use of articles, garbled syntax, you name it. I'm amazed that a house of OUP's reputation should let a sloppy job like this out its doors. And this isn't just carping grammarianism on my part. The mistakes are so egregious and frequent that they detract from the author's otherwise solid analysis and arguments. The fact that Mr. Lankov is not a native English speaker is not the issue. It was his publisher's job to clean up his prose and make him look better than he does here. In this, the chief responsibility of any publisher to an author appearing under their name, Oxford failed Mr. Lankov miserably.

I'm pretty sure the information in this book is largely spot on because; most everything I read about North Korea is effectively the same. There are slight variations but in effect the experiences shared by the different are largely the same. That said North Korea is the craziest place on Earth. If I hadn't known North Korea really exists, I'd swear the stories I hear about its government, its rulers and its history are the weird over the top fantasy of a kind found in Barbarella Queen of the Galaxy or (Brazil the campy Orwellian movie not the country)

The books read almost like spy novels because; every aspect of life in North Korea reads like a James Bond thriller without any of the lavish accompaniments. You must learn spy craft just to live in North Korea because anything that does not revolve tightly around the Little Father Angel Darling Sweethearts or whatever the Fearless Leader of North Korea is called today is treason. For all my lite hearted flippant talk about this book it is compelling and sad to hear of so much suffering by just plain common folk in North Korea. Hearing of people starving to death hurts my heart to a point words can explain. Hearing of people so starved that they don't stand because doing so burns to much energy saddens me greatly.

The really terrible thing is in the face of such horrid suffering we in the west are powerless to help North Korea working people because; the government would use whatever it saves to build Atomic bombs. North Korean communism is not the new communism lite like practiced in China and Vietnam. North Korean communism is full on Brutal Stalinist micromanagement personality cult communism that punishes you if you don't clean the portraits of the North Korean fearless leader angel darling sweethearts past and present.