Author Description

In discussing the political regime of North Korea, there are two pointsto be made: Firstly, the Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un regimes are twoseparate phenomena. In the case of North Korea, there is no shortageof topics to discuss: nuclear missiles, three-generational hereditarysuccession, and human rights problems such as the defector issue.Therefore, discussions tend to focus exclusively on a particular topicand often fail to see the wood for the trees, so to speak.Secondly, research for this book relies primarily on informationreleased by the official North Korean media. Although informationprovided by defectors and unconfirmed internal documents can furtherunderstanding of North Korea, the analysis of official documents isthe basis of North Korean research. Analysis of the content of RodongSinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of theWorkers' Party of Korea (WPK), has been at the heart of this research.