Customer Rating:  
Summary: Not a complete overall study - too fragmented
Comment: Although the book gives a nice introduction to the subject, it is too high-level and fragmented to provide overall insight in its subject. Certain parts of the life and character of the "Dear Leader" are highlighted, based on anecdotes (e.g. the two short meetings the author had with Kim, being part of a group of journalists) or news articles, but a thorough overall study...no.
Most important questions remain unstatisfactory answered, if not unanswered; what does this man want, what drives him? I would recommend this book instead: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great starting point
Comment: i have a keen interest in foreign policy and world events but knew very little about north korea so i thought i'd give this book a go. The book offers a good insight into the madness of Kim jung il and the country but at times fails to offer an in-depth view of the country and its workings. But none the less, it has inspired me to find out more about north kora and to move onto other similar titles.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Some insights but ultimately disappointing
Comment: Breen is a lively writer and has plenty of first-hand experience of North Korea, but this book is ultimately disappointing. He offers some interesting anecdotes and useful insights, but too often veers into flippant parody. The result is a patchy read - good for newcomers such as me as a primer for more serious works, but frustrating, I imagine, for anyone with more knowledge. I get the strong impression this is a rushed-through attempt to cash in on the increased global attention being given to North Korea, rather than a considered study by a seasoned Korea-watcher. Indeed, Breen does say he had approached the publisher with a different project. This impression of hasty opportunism is magnified by some very sloppy editing - there are several typos, bad spelling mistakes and ambiguous and confusing sentences. The chapters feel disjointed, especially toward the end of the book. One of them is devoted to a series of stories of suffering in the North Korean gulags. Harrowing, and very valuable in itself, but Breen makes no attempt to show how this illuminates Kim Jong-il's character. It feels like it's been dashed off quickly and stuffed in as an afterthought. Some of the anecdotes relating the author's personal experiences are weak, and feel like they've been included to indulge Breen's sense of himself as an intrepid explorer of a closed country. They're in there not because they're instructive, but because they happened to him. He has only "met" Kim twice (and then as one of a group of journalists) - not enough contact with the subject, I would have thought, to write convincingly on him. (Though I do appreciate that Kim is probably the last man on earth you could persuade to allow access to foreign biographers, so in the meantime perhaps any contact at all is impressive.) And in the end it's his analysis of Kim that lets the book down. After a promising build-up that paints a quite favourable picture of an arts-loving "positive-active" politician quite aware of the deep hypocrisy inherent in his role as object of cult worship, he doesn't fully explain why Jong-il can't change his country's course for the better. He suggests it is the structure of the state itself, rather than Kim, that is evil. But he fails to show why Jong-il cannot change that structure, or explain which parts of the state hierarchy would resist it. The idea that such a ruthless and absolute dictator is constrained to act radically needs more exploration. Finally, the book promises to broach three questions: Who Kim is, what he wants, and what we should about him. I was eagerly awaiting a comprehensive answer the last of these three, but when it comes, right at the end of the book, it covers barely a page. I think the author has become too caught up in his fascination with Kim's personality to think long and clearly about a strategy to deal with him.
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