The Great Successor bookcover

The Great Successor

The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
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Description

The behind-the-scenes story of the rise and reign of the world's strangest and most elusive tyrant, Kim Jong Un, by the journalist with the best connections and insights into the bizarrely dangerous world of North Korea.
Since his birth in 1984, Kim Jong Un has been swaddled in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly -- he could supposedly drive a car at the age of three -- to the grimly bloody stories of family members who perished at his command.
Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived, abetted by the approval of Donald Trump and diplomacy's weirdest bromance.
Skeptical yet insightful, Fifield creates a captivating portrait of the oddest and most secretive political regime in the world -- one that is isolated yet internationally relevant, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons -- and its ruler, the self-proclaimed Beloved and Respected Leader, Kim Jong Un.

Product Details

PublisherPublicAffairs
Publish DateJune 11, 2019
Pages336
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9781541742482
Dimensions9.3 X 6.0 X 1.4 inches | 1.2 pounds

About the Author

Anna Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for TheWashington Post. She previously covered Japan and the Koreas for the Post, and was the Seoul correspondent for the Financial Times. She has reported from more than twenty countries and has visited North Korea a dozen times, becoming one of the most authoritative journalists on this impenetrable country. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University, studying how change happens in closed societies. In 2018, she received the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University for her outstanding reporting on Asia.

Reviews

"Anna Fifield sheds new light on North Korea's leader in her biography of the absolute dictator...putting pretty much all the currently available information between the covers of a single book represents a welcome contribution to the literature."
--Brad Martin, Asia Times

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