Under The Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader - Bradley K. Martin

Under The Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by

Bradley K. Martin

Most of us have some curiosity about North Korea - what life is like there, what the Kim family are like and how the country came to be one of the most isolated and frankly, odd countries on the planet. I have to confess to not knowing a lot about the region before this book. I couldn't even have told you why or how the Korean War started. 

Before the review though, comes a confession - I didn't read all of this book. I wouldn't say I gave up, because I do intend to come back and finish it, but the damn thing is HUGE. I was reading it on my Kindle, so I had no idea how big it was - after reading it for a week, and seeing I had only read 10% of it, I assumed  my Kindle was mistaken, and somehow there was 500 blank pages at the end which skewed the percentage. I was wrong, it's enormous. It took me a little over 3 weeks to read half of it, and I'm a pretty fast reader. So my advice to you, dear reader is that you should only take this on if you are REALLY interested in the subject.

Major credit has to be given to Bradley Martin. It must be very difficult to get details or do any sort of research on such a secretive country. Most of what he has, has come from defectors, or from North Korean allies: Russia & China. 

So, a quick run through of North Korean History. 

Kil-Il Sung, motivated by Japanese colonisation threw his lot in with China and Russia in a guerilla war to oust the Japanese, thus becoming an opportunist Communist. At the end of WWII the Russians and Americans kicked the Japanese out of Korea, but couldn't agree on the whos or whats of running the country. A line was drawn and their puppets ruled a piece each (Kim in the north and Rhee in the south).

After the US pulled out, Kim thought he'd be able to invade and run the whole country. Russia told him not to, but he did anyway. He nearly succeeded, but then also nearly got completely wiped out until the Chinese came to his aid, and both sides ended up back where they started, behind the line. It's been like that ever since.

Kim originally put in place quite a few economic plans and ideas that were successful and raised the standard of living quite a bit in the North. For the first 15 year of his rule, North Korea was more prosperous and successful than the South. In the end though, the need to hold on to power overruled everything else, and he refused all help, disagreement and alternative opinion, causing the country to slide into economic ruin.

Obviously, there is a huge amount more to it than that (about 1000 pages more). The power transfer to Kim Jong Il and so on, but as I say, it's a huge book and I feel I have as much North Korean knowledge in my head as I can possibly manage.