The Great Successor by Anna Fifield — a peek behind North Korea’s curtain

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Excerpt (read version, 1st story):

The Great Successor by Anna Fifield — a peek behind North Korea’s curtain
Andrei Lankov June 14, 2019

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The Great Successor brims with important and exclusive information about the Kim family and personality of the “brilliant comrade” himself: his love for basketball, his youthful idealism, his loneliness at school. It also goes beyond the realm of Pyongyang court gossip. Fifield has talked to a number of ordinary North Koreans whose stories create a rich tapestry of life in the country over the past 20 to 30 years as it has evolved from a hyper-Stalinist dictatorship to a very unusual but still distinctly post-socialist country. We read how they have survived — and sometimes even prospered — in what is often seen as an impoverished country with a brainwashed population and Stalinist economy and nuclear ambitions.

As all North Korean watchers know, and this book demonstrates, North Korea is no longer a Stalinist country. Since the 1990s, the market economy has begun to play an increasingly important role in daily life and The Great Successor gives readers a good idea of how fast-growing North Korean capitalism operates. The government did not initiate this process and, until recently, did not approve it, but rather ignored the emergence of increasingly large private businesses that often registered themselves as state-owned enterprises, while remaining largely independent from authorities. The author gives a human face to the process. The book introduces a number of people who move the new economy: a truck driver cum small-scale wholesale merchant, a market stall owner, even a drug dealer — not to mention countless others.

Fifield has dined in the new, fashionable restaurants of Pyongyang where patrons with sufficient disposable income can feast on Italian pizzas and order prime steaks, New York-style ($48 each, roughly the monthly income of the average North Korean family).

Read more at: https://www.ft.com/content/3f873726-8138-11e9-a7f0-77d3101896ec

The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un
Anna Fifield05:00, Jun 16 2019

New book The Great Successor by NZ author Anna Fifield lifts the veil on the most enigmatic leader in the world, Kim Jong Un.

The most dangerous time for a novice autocrat is the first two years in power. It's then that he has to figure out who's loyal and who's expendable. It's during those first two years that someone else who wanted the job is most likely to make a play for it. This is especially the case when the leader inherits his supporters from his predecessor.

So when Kim Jong Un took over, he followed the model used by his father and grandfather and set about making sure the handful of elites who could keep him in power were rich and happy—and getting richer and happier.

Like his patriarchs, he has managed to survive as a dictator by controlling an entire nation through a relatively tiny group of people. It was a rule espoused by Machiavelli: don't worry about the general population; just be sure to enrich a small, elite group.

Read more at: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/113385981/the-great-successor-the-secret-rise-and-rule-of-kim-jong-un

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NPR:

Author Interviews
'Great Successor' Warns Kim Jong Un Is A Threat, Not A Joke
    Transcript
June 11, 20195:01 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

When Kim Jong Un emerged as the new leader of North Korea in 2011, it was a mystery to many in the Western world. To others, he was a punch line. Even some North Koreans didn't buy the hype.

ANNA FIFIELD: Some people in the more far-flung regions that I spoke to who - they said that they kind of choked a bit when they heard that he had been named the successor. And some of the myths that were created around him - so for example, that he could drive a car and shoot a gun when he was 5 years old.

MARTIN: That's the voice of Anna Fifield. She's a correspondent with The Washington Post who's been reporting extensively on North Korea and the Kim family. Her new book is called "The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny Of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un." In it, she follows how Kim Jong Un bested his siblings to become the leader of North Korea. At one point in the book, Fifield reveals how Kim's older half-brother ends up becoming an informant for the CIA, which could've cost him his life. He ended up murdered in a nerve agent attack in 2017. But Kim's rise starts much earlier. As part of her research, Anna Fifield travelled to an elite boarding school in Switzerland.

Read more at: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731540674/great-successor-warns-kim-jong-un-is-a-threat-not-a-joke

The New Yorker:

The Early Life of Kim Jong Un
By Isaac Chotiner   June 14, 2019

n her new book, “The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un,” the journalist Anna Fifield examines the life of North Korea’s dictator. Since Kim Jong Il’s death, in 2011, his son has presided over some small-market reforms to the North Korean economy, the development of its nuclear program, the continued brutalization of the country’s people, and, recently, a surprisingly warm relationship with President Trump. But Fifield also examines Kim’s early life, including unexpected Japanese influences, his often lonely adolescence and schooling in Switzerland, and his passion for machines and aviation. In doing so, she helps explain how he was able to take over the country at the age of twenty-seven and govern with ruthlessness and surprising adroitness.

I recently spoke by phone with Fifield, who is the Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed Kim’s complicated relationship with China, whether he has any ideology beyond power, and the dangers of trying to achieve economic reform while keeping a dictatorship intact.

You put forth this idea in the book that Kim Jong Un has a greater need to deliver change for his people than his father ever did because of their respective circumstances. Why is that, and how do you think that’s influenced his regime?

Continued at: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-early-life-of-kim-jong-un?mbid=synd_digg

Japan Times:

In discussion with Anna Fifield, author of 'The Great Successor' | The Japan Times
Martin Laflamme

BEIJING - On June 11, The Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield’s new book, “The Great Successor” will be published by PublicAffairs. The Japan Times’ contributing writer Martin Laflamme discusses with Fifield the experience of writing her book, how she tracked down sources and her thoughts on Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.

Many defectors told you that even before they fled North Korea, they understood that much of the propaganda was bunkum. Some even used very explicit language to say that Kim Jong Un was “a piece of s—-,” that he was “not capable” and that “they knew the truth.” However, given the constant indoctrination and state of total surveillance that is prevalent in North Korea, such views are surprising. Is it possible that these thoughts were formed after the defectors fled and then projected backwards?

Many North Koreans know that their country is not the socialist paradise it’s cracked up to be because the vast majority have seen movies and dramas from the outside world. I have not met a single escapee from North Korea during Kim Jong Un’s reign who hasn’t watched outside media. They’ve seen soppy South Korean rom-coms, they’ve seen Chinese action films, they’ve seen Bollywood hits. Some have even seen pornography. So they know that the outside world is much richer and freer than North Korea. But even armed with this information, most are unable to do anything about it. The system of punishment is so severe and all-encompassing in North Korea that people who criticize the regime, or even express a desire to live in South Korea, could find themselves in a hard labor camp for the rest of their lives, perhaps with their parents and their children and their spouse. Faced with that prospect, North Koreans try to leave rather than try to change the system. So I believe them when they said they knew the truth while they were there.

Read more at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2019/06/08/books/discussion-anna-fifield-author-great-successor/#.XQcgDP5OlQI

One can probably find out enough about the book by reading all of the interviews and so on in the publicizing of this new book. It sounds very interesting.  Amazon,   around $18, it does appear the price varies.