A classic Bond villain

North Korea watchers are good book-buyers, rarely able to resist scratching that itch of interest caused by the world’s worst regime. Accounts by escapees sit on our shelves alongside the memoirs of anyone (Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef, for example) who has come into contact with the country or its leadership. Some books, such as Barbara Demick’s 2009 Nothing to Envy, break through to a wider audience. But the questions still need to be satisfied. What is the world’s most closed society like? What do its captive population actually believe? And who are the leaders of this communist monarchy?

Through open source material, repeated travel to the country and first-hand interviews with exiles, Anna Fifield covers what can be known about the Kim family’s third-generation ruler. Those anticipating James Bond villain stories will not be disappointed. We read of the young dictator sitting in his coastal resort playground of Wonsan as his munitions chiefs use their new 300mm guns to turn an offshore island to dust. Elsewhere, he sits smiling at the desk in his beachfront house as his rocket scientists roll out a missile-launcher and blast the munition off in the direction of Japan for his edification. On rare foreign trips, such as last year’s summit in Singapore, he travels with a special portable toilet so that no samples are left behind. And after a recent dinner with the South Korean leadership, his staff swept through the room to collect and forensically clean all glasses and cutlery used by Kim and his sister.

One of the challenges in writing and reading about North Korea is to get the right balance between the hilarity and the horror. For there is a surreal oddity to the place beyond anywhere else on earth. At the same time, it’s the only country today where comparisons with the totalitarianisms of the last century can feel inadequate.