Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee--A Look Inside North Korea

A North Korean defector finds fleeing the Kim dictatorship as nightmarish as living under it in this harrowing memoir. Jang, now a journalist in South Korea, worked in the North Korean government%E2%80%99s United Front Department for espionage and psy-war penning propaganda; he won fame, riches (%E2%80%9Cindividual rations on a weekly basis, instead of household rations%E2%80%9D), and a Kafkaesque audience with Kim Jong-Il for a fulsome poem praising the Dear Leader (%E2%80%9CLord of the Gun/ Lord of Justice/ Lord of Peace/ Lord of Unification%E2%80%9D). Jang%E2%80%99s rare high-level insider%E2%80%99s perspective on the North Korean system is especially eye-opening; drawing from secret archives, he relates how devious bureaucrat Kim Jong-il usurped the power of his father Kim Il-sung, but he hits hardest in scenes juxtaposing the frenzied glorification of the Kim cult with the starvation and brutalization he witnessed among ordinary people. Much of the book is a thriller-like narrative of Jang%E2%80%99s 2004 escape into the netherworld of illegal North Korean refugees in China, where he drifts, penniless and hunted by the police, through the glittering wealth and hard-edged anomie of modern Chinese cities, dependent on the kindness of random strangers. Jang%E2%80%99s almost impossibly dramatic story is one of the best depictions yet of North Korea%E2%80%99s nightmare. (May)