Book review: Dear Leader, by Jang Jin-sung
Just when I think no new revelation about the brutality and indifference of the North Korean regime towards its own people will be sufficient to shock me, along comes Jang Jin-sung and Dear Leader.
by Jang Jin-sung (translated by Shirley Lee)
Rider Books
4.5 stars
Just when I think no new revelation about the brutality and indifference of the North Korean regime towards its own people will be sufficient to shock me, along comes Jang Jin-sung and .
Most of us have heard tales of North Korean mothers forced to drown their own babies, of arbitrary arrests, of torture and starvation applied as a way of keeping a citizenry cowed.
In truth, any Pyongyang watcher inevitably becomes inured to the suffering. But Jang's new book forces that suffering in front of the reader's eyes and makes it more intensely personal. And that has to be a good thing if the excesses of this evil regime are ever going to be halted.
Of all the tales of misery within North Korea, Jang's description of the near-death woman found selling her young daughter in a Pyongyang market for the price of a loaf of bread is a low point.
It was incidents such as this that forced Jang to reconsider his own privileged position within North Korean society. An even more powerful motivation were the secrets he learned about Kim Jong-il, who ruled with an iron fist after the death in 1994 of his father, Kim Il-sung, until his own demise in December 2011.
