Must-Read Book Reviews: Hassig and Myers on North Korea
The New York Times has some great book reviews today. One of the titles is Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy,” and two others are of books I’ve been looking forward to reading: “The Hidden People of North Korea” by Kangdan Oh and Ralph Hassig (excerpt here) and “The Cleanest Race” by Brian Myers (excerpt here). I was astonished to read that “Katy” Hassig, a person who is deeply connected and intertwined with Korea policy-making circles in Washington, would nonetheless arrive at a conclusion this, well, sensible:
Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh’s book, “The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom,” is wonkier than Ms. Demick’s and less reader-friendly, but it covers more ground. [….] Their book is based on more than 200 interviews with defectors, and it paints a picture of a restless populace, increasingly dubious about the official propaganda. “It would be a gross exaggeration to say that the people support Kim Jong-il,” they write. “Rather, it does not occur to them to oppose him. North Koreans are too busy trying to survive, and too preoccupied by the tensions of the supposed mighty conflict with America, to be able to think about much else. [….]
Mr. Hassig and Ms. Oh’s book concludes with pointed policy recommendations. They think it is nearly hopeless to negotiate with Mr. Kim and suspect that “nonproliferation agreements with the regime will simply encourage it to brandish new threats in the future. Instead of fixating on Korea’s weapons, the authors suggest bypassing the regime and reaching out to North Korea’s people, who sorely need humanitarian aid and “a new way of thinking about their government and their society. [N.Y. Times, Dwight Garner]
As you might expect, Myers also challenges the Washington groupthink about North Korea as a regime that can be disarmed through the right combination of diplomacy and “incentives.” Without having read either book yet, I can see a theme common to both of them: that the conventional, establishment analysis of the attitudes of North Korea’s regime and people deserve a serious re-think, and with that basic criticism, I couldn’t agree more.
Joshua, I just started reading “The Cleanest Race” yesterday; it’s a short book, and can be finished in one day. It should be interesting to examine the origins of the DPRK’s ideology on racial purity.
Not yet sure if I’ll get “The Hidden People of North Korea;” have several books waiting and getting these two books on the DPRK only made my reading list longer.
I got my copy of Myers’s book yesterday as well, and stayed up late reading it. It does give a much more realistic and intuitive picture than most. In fact I recognize some of the same memes in the South.
The most surprising point so far was the tolerance of Japanese collaborators in the North as well as the South. The anti-Japanese plank was apparently added to the North’s platform retroactively, which saved a lot of effort.
I don’t recall the Roh-era collaboration-hunt mentioning any collaborators in the North.
Good to know The Cleanest Race is a short read. I need to pick it up still. The author is coming to Stanford to speak next month and I plan on attending that.