About book Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty (2006)
This was the other book recommended to me at the same time as The Cleanest Race, but it took me much longer to get to just because of its size. Almost a thousand pages, though admittedly with nearly a hundred pages of footnotes, took a bit for me to work up to, but I'm glad I did and I recommend this book to anyone whose view of North Korea is formed mostly by Best Korea memes and pictures of Kim Jong-il looking at things. The main impression that Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader gave me is that for all North Korea's claims of being the vanguard of the people's revolution spirit, it's actually just another occurrence of the oldest large-scale governmental type on Earth--the Mesopotamian god-king. At the top is the god-king, the descendent of Heaven, and he is surrounded by his relatives, who also have high positions by virtue of their divine blood. Below them are the nobility--in the Korea context, high ranking Party members and military leaders--which under Kim Jong-il has become more of a warrior aristocracy. Below them are the common people, and below them are the field slaves, composed of political prisoners.And "Political prisoners" has a hugely expansive definition in North Korea. The policy of "three generations of punishment" means that a single crime can send an entire family to the internment camps or prevent them from ever getting a good job or university position. Much of the book is interviews with defectors, and the constant refrain in their testimony is that a single careless remark, or a single action taken in haste, or the behavior of a parent or child, or even simple descent from pre-revolution landowners or the yangban nobility, locked the defector out of ever being more than a poverty-stricken farmer, so they fled the country. Which means that their family became guilty by association and probably ended up in the camps. Actually, looking at the wikipedia article on the yangban, it seems like the Kims have basically recreated feudal Korea, just with themselves at the head. Some revolution.That comparison was the most interesting part of the book for me, because much of the rest of it is just information that we already know. North Korea's economy is a complete mess, the country went through a terrible famine in the 90s where millions starved, the seemingly-insane actions of the leaders are actually calculated to create an impression of a dangerously unstable regime that must be appeased lest they nuke Seoul, all of these are common knowledge, or at least they seem so to me and so reading multiple interviews where these facts were repeatedly touched on slowed my reading considerably. The other problem is that Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader tries to be multiple books at once. It's about the lives of defectors and what caused them to defect, but no individual defector is dealt with for very long and the end effect is more of a wall of misery and large-scale disenfranchisement, which is a good description of North Korea but lacks a personal touch that made me want to read another story of someone who fled after they said that South Koreans have cool watches and thus were banned from all the good jobs forever and ever. It's also a history of the Korean War, which is definitely an important part of Korean history, but it focuses a lot more on the actions of the U.N.Americans in the war than it does on Kim Il-sung's actions. It's a history of the Kim dynasty, but most of the official history is lies, Kim Il-sung's biography is full of lies, and his memoirs are also lies and most of the later volumes of his memoirs were published by his son, who obvious has his own motives. The end result is that the book tries to do too much and ends up not really doing anything all that well. The Cleanest Race is better on the subject of whether North Koreans actually believe all the ludicrous propaganda that the regime puts out (answer: "it's complicated"), and I have to assume that there are better books about defectors' lives or the Korean War out there. For sheer comprehensiveness it wins, but at the cost of long digressions, some rambling, and a lack of focus throughout much of the text. I'm not sad I read it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone else.
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This is an interesting read. Unfortunately, it lacks structure. The author jumps back and forth from biographies of the Kims, history of North Korea, observations and reflections from his journeys, interviews with refugees and anecdotes. Most of the chapter titles don't tell you anything at all about what the chapter is going to be about. Generally, the book follows a chronological order, but I found that there are many things in between that I was not very interested in and had rather skipped. Given the many details and anecdotes, the book ends up being too long. All the more necessary is it to give it a clear structure and clear chapter titles to allow you to focus on reading what is the most interesting to you. Instead, the author leaves you in the dark with his lack of structure and focus and useless chapter titles.However, the book is quite well researched. The author has traveled to North Korea several times and combines the knowledge he gained there with academic research and interviews with refugees/ defectors and others - including Western diplomats and officials who know half-brothers of Kim Jong-il.Martin does not only give you the background knowledge and his anecdotes, but also addresses many important questions, such as: Why did NK under-estimate the ability of the South and the US to counter its invasion? Why did policy not change after it failed so clearly? Did the Kims not know about the situation on the ground? Or did they not care?Generally, I found the way Martin makes sense out of what he saw in North Korea not as compelling as the approach taken by Myers in the book "The Cleanest Race". Martin seems to generally focus on sympathy with common North Koreans and their exploitation by a parasitic and ignorant ruling elite. Myers gives you a whole new approach on how this propaganda works, how North Koreans see themselves and why they will not give up nuclear weapons.After all, it is a good read. I think that a clear structure and useful chapter titles are a must for a book of more than 700 pages, but if you're not bothered by this, you might still want to buy this book.
—Daniel
It took me over a year to read this book. Bradley Martin was thorough in his research and writing! The book began with information about Kim Il-sung (starting with his childhood) and the Korean war, and then the subsequent chapters spanned many decades, switching between between politics, human rights, and economics. I learned a ton. The book was well written and interesting overall, although I liked the chapters with defector testimony the most. One defector (quoted in this book) said it well: Too many world leaders are more concerned with North Korea's nuclear issues than its human rights problems.I bought the Kindle version of this book, and I'm glad I did for two reasons: (1) The book is enormous. Holding it would definitely be uncomfortable and fatiguing. (2) There were a ton of notes. And I mean a TON. I liked how I could just click on the endnote number to jump straight to the note, and then click on the number again to return to where I'd left off in the main text. However, it was frustrating that there was no distinction between notes containing references and notes containing elaboration and extra details. I always wanted to read the latter, but I wasted a lot of time clicking on notes that ended up just being reference information.
—Maron Anrow
The book was an interesting look into many aspects of North Korea. The author presents a mostly non-biased view to all things North Korea.Martin begins his book around roughly 1900 with early history of Kim Hyong-jik, the father of KIm Il-sung then proceeds with the history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. From there, the book bounces around from defector testimony of daily life, politics, matters of economy, and daily troubles of North Koreans from peasants to the elite. The reader is bound to learn new facts that they may have not know prior to reading. Critiques: Reviewer D. Kauck from Amazon mirrors my opinion as far as critiques (paraphrased): "This is an interesting read. Unfortunately, it lacks structure. The author jumps back and forth from biographies of the Kims, history of North Korea, observations and reflections from his journeys, interviews with refugees and anecdotes. Generally, the book follows a chronological order, but I found that there are many things in between that I was not very interested in and had rather skipped. Given the many details and anecdotes, the book ends up being too long." My specific critiques: I found the in-depth history of Kim Hyong-jik who is relevant in the Kim story (but not for 50 pages) a bit dull as well as the mundane aspects of certain areas of North Korea's day-to-day economy and politics. Also, because the book was first published in 2004 (and a new edition in 2006), many new developments have taken place. Of this writing (December 2010), the most notable news is the successor to Kim Jong-il and as of the last few days, the tensions (yet again) between the North and the South. The last 20 pages or so consist of Martin speculating who the successor could be as well as North Korea's future. Among the many names and people he mentions of possible successors, Martin actually hits on the person who, as of this writing, could be the next leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. Overall the book is an interesting read although a bit hefty at 705 pages with an additional 132 pages of notes. While I've had an interest in visiting North Korea for the last few years, after reading this book, I feel much more educated about their history and what goes on behind the scenes if I were to ever visit the last totalitarian regime on earth.
—Tom M
