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Avg. Rating: 4.5
A compelling subject
Bradley K. Martin leverages his considerable experience and knowledge to give shape to a thorough exploration of the Kim Dynasty that has ruled North Korea since the end of the World War. Filled with interesting factual material coupled with interviews with North Koreans, the book opens up North Korea to the uninitiated, which includes most of us.
Unfortunately, Martin also liberally sprinkles the volume with his personal observations about the attractiveness of North Korean women, both collectively and as individuals. We learn in one chapter, for example, that Martin is glad the subject of his interview does not follow other East Asian women in their "lamentable tendency to chop off their flowing tresses" (p.312) We are told in a chapter dealing with Kim Jong-il's potential to modernize his country that "North Korean women--among the most beautiful in the world to begin with--obviously were taking far more care with their appearances than a decade earlier" (p.355) One has to wonder whether the sexual appeal of North Korean women to Martin's personal tastes really has a meaningful, legitimate place in this work. It certainly does not contribute to our understanding of the country or its leaders. (One wonders how Martin would feel if the reviewers of his book made observations about his "attractiveness")
And ultimately the impulse at the root of these shared sexual observations exposes the greatest flaw of the book. Martin cannot escape the cage of his own preconceptions, speculations and predilections. Many chapters would be half their current length if Martin had not included purely speculative observations about the North Korean leadership and its motivations. Obviously, Martin is dealing with source materials that are simply too scant and ideological to be taken at face value, but I am not sure that reading the innuendo filled speculations of a western journalist helps to unravel the veil of mystery which shrouds the North Korean "truth."
Nevertheless, this book is one of the few accessible works on the subject and merits attention for this alone.
Understanding North Korea
Today's Stalinist North Korea came about through the actions of Kim Il-sung (1912-1994) and his son Kim Jong-il (1942- ). This small nation of twenty million manages despite a crippled economy to keep the world's largest standing army (if measured by number of soldiers). It is developing nuclear weapons and has the temerity to thumb its nose at its only friend and protector, China. North Korea is clearly a dangerous troublemaker. Given the enormous cost in broken lives, it's just as clear to any humanitarian that North Korea needs reform to save its people from misery.
But what should we do and how should we do it? Machiavelli would surely agree that understanding your enemy is of prime concern and Bradley Martin's book is the best place to start.
Because North Korea is a product of Kim the father and Kim the son (and let's not forget the holy spirit of Juche/Self-reliance) Martin provides a short biography of each of them. He disentangles the fiction and legends into a more plausible version of reality. Later, Martin describes the condition of women, of political prisoners, etc. He documents his accounts with many interviews of defectors, which comprise maybe 20% of the book. Martin also examines many of the events that concern the west such as the development of nuclear technology and the economic collapse in the 1980s with the resulting famine.
Interestingly, while Martin conjectures that the famine might have been used by design to starve millions of political outcasts, he concludes that this was not the case. The book's best feature is that rather than demonize Kim Jong-il's regime, it analyzes it. Certainly Kim is a ruthless thug who prefers keeping his kingly privileges to seeing his people prosper, but Bradley gives evidence that Kim would actually prefer seeing his people prosper as well. Certainly Kim is cruel enough to allow inhumane treatment of prisoners for political purposes, but he doesn't go around torturing people just for the fun of it. Probably the world would be a better place if Kim had died in childhood, but he did not and we must deal with him and with the current situation.
Martin advocates a cool level-headed conciliatory approach to North Korea and to dealing with Kim. He ends the book with a proposal that would allow the North to liberalize without Kim losing face (all important in Asia) or his position. As galling as this would be to the West, it might actually be the wiser course to follow.
North Korean political study is one of the drier topics one could choose to book up on. Thankfully Martin's style is entertaining without losing the gravitas required by the subject matter. Also, Martin's prose is more than a little tongue-in-cheek: almost all chapter titles are more or less as cheeky as the book title. A light touch that serves well in presenting such a heavy topic.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
An Excellent Primer on the Hermit Kingdom
Journalist Bradley K. Martin's Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is an excellent examination of daily life under the regime of North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il. While this book is weaker when discussing the salient foreign policy issues of missile tests and nuclear programs, it is an outstanding reference to the repression, fear, and brainwashing at the heart of the Kim regime.
Between 1979 and the paperback's publication in 2005, Martin has been on multiple trips to North Korea, one of the world's most isolated and authoritarian regimes. He has also been posted for significant periods of time in South Korea both as a reporter and a scholar. The result is that Martin has an outstanding bird's-eye view of the regime as well as access to defectors and other first-hand accounts which are critical to a work like this. Martin makes the most out of these resources, interviewing dozens of defectors over a long period of time on multiple subjects. While it would be natural for someone engaged in such an interview project to come to wholeheartedly believe everything the defectors have said, Martin applies a vigorous critical eye to the defectors' sometimes conflicting accounts. While Martin in no way minimizes the inherent evil in the Kim regime, he does help to sort some of the wheat from the chaff when it comes to defector testimony and rumors which circulate regarding the Kim regime.
Martin is clearly no fan of Kim il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il, and his chapters detailing their early lives and personal attributes do not shy away from strange or negative data. However, he avoids falling into the easy trap of making them both cartoonish bad guys (see: Team America and even points out the (limited) positives in both personalities, leaving the novice reader with a nuanced view of both Kims. However, due to the paucity of reliable information, these chapters sometimes read more like gossip columns of the Kims personal lives rather than detailed biographies. This is in no way Martin's fault, as the available information consists of North Korean hagiographies or biased and partisan attacks on North Korea's ruling family.
This is not primarily a political history; while major issues such as the Panmunjom axe-wielding incident and the 1990s famine are addressed, they are only superficially examined, though the issues pop up repeatedly in lengthy extracts of defector interviews. Indeed, when Martin delves into foreign policy, such as his examination of foreign policy in Chapter 36, he often makes broad and poorly evidenced assertions. For example, the hardcover edition will leave the reader with the impression that in 2004 "Kim Jong-Il wanted to join the international system and was willing to give up his country's role in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in exchange for sufficient help in reaching that goal. If he and his military colleagues could be persuaded that they would never be attacked by the United States or South Korea, they might even give up on the longer-range missiles and the atomic bombs in their stockpile." The reality is that even after the 1994 nuclear agreement, it appears that North Korea tried to have it both ways, accepting foreign aid while continuing a covert nuclear program that resulted in success. There is no reason to believe that a 2004 offer of aid would have led to a different conclusion, though Martin tries hard to link tensions to the Bush administration instead of the Kim regime. Indeed, some of the latter original chapters almost read like an advertisement for John Kerry, who was in an election campaign against Bush as this book was being finished.
Similarly, the original hardcover contained a long piece on economic reform in North Korea and posited that Kim Jong-Il, having consolidated his political power, was pursuing a policy of economic reform. Fortunately, both this assertion and the comments on the nuclear program are diluted by Martin in a new Epilogue which includes details of his 2005 trip to North Korea. Based on his first-hand observations and conversations with aid workers in North Korea, the paperback is able to scale back some of the more grandiose claims of the hardcover edition, portraying North Korea as less committed to reform and engaged in a far more modest reform program than the 2004 edition would have predicted.
These problems with Martin's foreign policy analysis should in no way discourage a novice reader who wants to learn more about North Korea. This book simply is stronger when discussing daily life in and the history of North Korea than it is at discussing current events. Martin describes in detail the system of repression, including punishment of multiple generations of political opponents and an economic/political system that puts Communist Party officials above the law and normal citizens at risk of arrest, starvation, or worse. These chapters, which consume the vast majority of Under the Loving Care, are outstanding. It also helps that, as a journalist, Martin has combined a quick and readable prose style with meticulous research, as evidenced by his 134 pages of footnotes.
The bottom line is that this is an excellent book and that it will provide insight to the casual observer who is interested in getting a well-researched and nuanced view into a country in the so-called 'Axis of Evil.' Although long, this book is rich in detail and easy to read and I highly recommend it.
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