North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

Despite impressive credentials, Pearson and Tudor, respectively the Seoul correspondent at Reuters and the Economist’s former Korea correspondent, disappoint with this look inside a mystery-shrouded country. Their choice to focus on how the average North Korean lives, and how the strict government regulations play out in reality, sounds promising. But the authors assume that the lay reader will have more knowledge about the totalitarian regime and its ambitions than is likely, and, strangely, they do not open with an overview of the country’s national and international politics. Better editing would have helped; some footnotes, such as one on the former president of Sierra Leone, contain distractingly irrelevant trivia, while others contain crucial information, such as about North Korea’s nuclear program, or how government employees can pay a monthly fee to be excused from work and “engage in private business.” Given the heightened interest in the country after the controversy surrounding the movie The Interview, this book comes across as a missed opportunity to examine North Korea from a different perspective. (Apr.)