What happens when a dictator wins absolute power and isolates a nation from the outside world? In a nightmare of political theory stretched to madness and come to life, North Korea's Kim Jong IL made himself into a living god, surrounded by lies and flattery and beyond criticism. As over two
million of his subjects starved to death, Kim Jong IL roamed between palaces staffed by beautiful girls and stocked with expensive international delicacies. Outside, the steel mills shut down, the trains stopped running, the power went out, and the hospitals ran out of medicine. When the population
threatened to revolt, Kim imposed a reign of terror, deceived the United Nations, and plundered the country's dwindling resources to become a nuclear power. Now this tiny bankrupt nation is using her nuclear capability to blackmail the United States.
Veteran correspondent Jasper Becker
takes us inside one of the most secretive countries in the world, exposing the internal chaos, blind faith, rampant corruption, and terrifying cruelty of its rulers. Becker details the vain efforts to change North Korea by actors inside and outside the country and the dangers this highly volatile
country continues to pose. This unique land, ruled by one family's megalomania and paranoia, seems destined to survive and linger on, a menace to its own people and to the rest of the world. But should the nations of the world allow this regime to survive? That's the question with which this book
concludes.
Preface: Rogue State
Introduction
1. Famine and Flight
2. The Kim Dynasty
3. The Making of a God King
4. Slave State
5. North Korea's Economic Collapse
6. Kim Jong Il's Court
7. Kim Jong Il--The Terrorist Master
8. Nuclear Warlord
9. Kim Jong Il--The
Reformer
10. The United Nations and Genocide
11. Kim Dae Jung and the South Korean Way
12. Grappling with a Rogue State
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
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Jasper Becker has worked as a foreign correspondent for twenty years, including eleven years based in Beijing. He has written four books on the region, which have been translated into seven languages. His most recent work is The Chinese.