I’ve just read a book I must recommend to you all — Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, by Michael Malice.
The book is extraordinary in that it captures, with frightening accuracy, not only the near-solipsistic narcissism of the fully developed totalitarian dictator, but also the seductiveness of the expertly managed personality cult that surrounds such men. One finds oneself at times almost irresistibly drawn to the Kims, and to the Juche Idea. (Reading the Koran can have the same feeling.)
The author, Michael Malice, has spent some time in North Korea, and probably knows the DPRK as well as any Westerner. I met him recently at a small dinner-and -discussion gathering, where he gave a fascinating talk about the place. There really is no other country like it anywhere on Earth. (He is also the founder of the website Overheard in New York.)
Read this book. And when you are done, read the haunting short story It’s a Good Life, by Jerome Bixby. Then it will all make sense.
3 Comments
Sir,
I respectfully beg to differ.
I suggest instead that one not consume Cathedral products about the DPRK or any other subject.
Visit the DPRK and form your own opinions, based on your own first-hand experiences.
The DPRK is actually the world’s only explicitly anti-Leftist state. That’s why the Cathedral is in lock step against it: media, academia, and government all find it necessary to try to convince us that a country the size of Mississippi that can barely feed itself and which has zero extraterritorial ambitions is somehow a “threat” to regional and even world peace and security.
Eskimo mass media says that the fact that the DPRK bans Eskimo mass media is ipso facto a human rights violation.
Black is white; up is down…
For what it’s worth, I have been to the DPRK numerous times, and not as a tourist.
Best regards,
Real Gary Seven
Well, Gary, given what you’ve said here I think you’d rather enjoy the book. It’s hardly an unsympathetic account.
I’m curious: as what, then?
Tell me though: what is it that you like the most about the DPRK? Is it the liberty, or the prosperity? I must confess that despite the coloration of Cathedral bias, it’s difficult nevertheless to see Kim Jong Il as a modern avatar of Le Roi Soleil, or Frederick II, or one of the Antonine emperors.
Moreover, to the extent that I am familiar with present-day reactionary thought, my understanding is that one of the essential liberties is the right of exit, which as far as I am aware is not a conspicuous feature of the Juche Idea.
Let me ask you this: is the DPRK in fact someplace you’d like to live?
I’d be curious to read more too.
http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang_5.html