The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, by Blaine Harden
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The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, by Blaine Harden
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of Kim Il Sung's rise to power, and the brave North Korean fighter pilot who escaped the prison state and delivered the first MiG-15 into American handsIn The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception—and escape.As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theft—just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953—electrified the world and incited Kim’s bloody vengeance.During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans.Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim’s shadowy rise, as well as from never-before-released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the world’s longest-lasting totalitarian state.
The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, by Blaine Harden- Amazon Sales Rank: #336682 in Books
- Published on: 2015-03-17
- Released on: 2015-03-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x .94" w x 6.50" l, 1.17 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month for March 2015: A lot of ink has been spilled writing about North Korea lately, and for good reason: the Hermit Kingdom is inscrutable, ominous, and just plain strange. In fact, this is author Blaine Harden's second visit to deliriously Orwellian country in three years, following his remarkable 2012 book, Escape from Camp 14. This second effort is also well worth the trip. Relying on declassified documents and interviews, Harden applies his journalistic acumen to the task of tracking two pivotal players at the dawn of the Kim regime. On one side is Kim Il Sung, rising from his origins as a scrappy guerrilla insurgent to become the self-appointed "Great Leader" who brazenly, sometimes incompetently, pitted a triumvirate of superpowers against each other on the Korean peninsula. Harden exposes Kim's shadowy, contentious relationships with Stalin and Mao, both of whom underestimated the budding tyrant's recklessness--while overestimating his martial talent--in their game of global chess. On the other side is No Kum Sok, a young fighter pilot who silently labors as a secret traitor, patiently biding his time reciting state pabulum and waiting for the main chance to make a high-stakes flight for the south. The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot expertly melds geopolitics with personal struggle, creating an exciting and illuminating account of a chapter of world history that still resonates today. --Jon Foro
Review Praise for The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot
"Blaine Harden takes us on a fascinating journey deep into the dark origins of the North Korean state, leavened by a stirring account of one young man's courageous quest to escape it. Thoroughly transporting."—Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat“Harden delivers another page-turner...weav[ing] together narratives of ‘Great Leader’ Kim Il Sung and No Kum Sok, who harbored a childhood dream of coming to the U.S., even though ‘at 19 he became the youngest jet fighter pilot on either side of the Korean War...’ With access to No and newly released intelligence, Harden presents fresh insights into North Korea.”—Publishers Weekly "By contrasting these emblematic figures [Kim Il-Sung and No Kum Sok], Mr. Harden has produced a riveting book that makes the history of North Korea accessible to the general reader."—Wall Street Journal
“I could not put this book down. The interwoven stories of Kim Il-Sung and MiG fighter pilot No Kum Sok are carefully researched and artfully told. Harden shows how each man played the system to achieve his lifelong goal—in Kim's case, the creation of a personality cult and oppressive regime, and in No's case, defection from it. Harden succeeds in offering a unique lens on North Korean history and politics that offers something for both the general and expert readership.”—Dr. Victor Cha, Professor of Government and Director of Asian Studies, Georgetown University; former National Security Council director for Asian affairs, 2004-7
“Having exposed the full horror of the North Korean gulag by telling the story of Shin Dong-hyuk’s escape from Camp 14, Blaine Harden now uses contrasting portraits of the founding tyrant Kim Il Sung and the young MiG pilot who flew to freedom six decades ago to explain how the monstrous political system of North Korea came into existence in the first place. The result is a triumph of story-telling that brings history to life and explains why the North Korean regime is such a menace to its own people and to the world.”—Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy
“The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot is at once a fascinating look at how evil takes hold and how one ordinary man escapes its grasp with wit and determination. Harden’s compelling narrative is not to be missed, an outstanding follow-up to Escape from Camp 14.”—Gregory A. Freeman, author of The Gathering Wind: Hurricane Sandy, the Sailing Ship Bounty, and a Courageous Rescue at Sea
“A masterful account of a forgotten story from a forgotten war. In an artful blending of the stories of Kim Il-Sung’s rise to power and leadership of North Korea during the Korean War, with that of No Kum Sok, a young man who became a fighter pilot in the North Korean Air Force and who defected to South Korea in his MiG-15, Harden provides us with a unique insight into a missing chapter of the Korean War. Harden’s account of No Kum Sok’s life before, during and after the Korean War is a commanding performance of interviews and exploitation of declassified intelligence documents. The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot is recommended to anyone interested in the Korean War, Kim Il-Sung or military aviation.”—Joseph Bermudez, North Korea expert and Chief Analytics Officer and Co-Founder, A Unique Advantage
“A rewarding book with much to offer, including the likely spark of new interest in how singular choices made by both men and nations can reverberate for generations.”—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Escape From Camp 14
"Harden’s book, besides being a gripping story, unsparingly told, carries a freight of intelligence about this black hole of a country."—Bill Keller, The New York Times
“A remarkable story, [Escape from Camp 14 ] is a searing account of one man’s incarceration and personal awakening in North Korea’s highest-security prison.”—The Wall Street Journal
“A book without parallel, Escape from Camp 14 is a riveting nightmare that bears witness to the worst inhumanity, an unbearable tragedy magnified by the fact that the horror continues at this very moment without an end in sight.”—Terry Hong, Christian Science Monitor
"U.S. policymakers wonder what changes may arise after the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, this gripping book should raise awareness of the brutality that underscores this strange land. Without interrupting the narrative, Harden skillfully weaves in details of North Korea's history, politics and society, providing context for Shin's plight.”—The Associated Press
“[Shin’s] tale becomes even more gripping after his unprecedented journey . . . after he realizes that he has been raised as something less than human. He gradually, haltingly—and, so far, with mixed success—sets out to remake himself as a moral, feeling human being.”—Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post
“A riveting new biography . . . If you want a singular perspective on what goes on inside the rogue regime, then you must read [this] story. It’s a harrowing tale of endurance and courage, at times grim but ultimately life-affirming.”—CNN
“As an action story, the tale of Shin’s breakout and flight is pure The Great Escape, full of feats of desperate bravery and miraculous good luck. As a human story it is gut wrenching; if what he was made to endure, especially that he was forced to view his own family merely as competitors for food, was written in a movie script, you would think the writer was overreaching. But perhaps most important is the light the book shines on an under-discussed issue, an issue on which the West may one day be called into account for its inactivity.”—The Daily Beast
“Blaine Harden's chronicle of Shin Dong-hyuk's life in a North Korean prison camp and his eventual escape is a slim, searing, humble book—as close to perfect as these volumes of anguished testimony can be.”—Book Forum
About the Author Blaine Harden formerly served as The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Nairobi, Warsaw, New York, Seattle, and Tokyo. He covered civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. He was also a local and national reporter for The New York Times, as well as a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of three other books: Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia, and Escape from Camp 14. Africa won a Pen American Center citation for first book of nonfiction. Escape from Camp 14 was a New York Times and international bestseller published in twenty-eight languages. He lives in Seattle.
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Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Hopefully a Movie Is in the Works By Ken Elder Ken Rowe (No Kum Sok) has been a good friend since 1964. We sat next to each other as engineers, and I have read his memoir. A MIG-15 to Freedom. Recently declassified US Intelligence records have added much to everything previously published.What a great idea to weave the two stories of good (Ken) and evil (Kim II Sung). Mr. Harden does a masterful job making an excitingly good read and a well documented History Lesson that is still very relevant today. This is a must read for anyone who doesn't understand why North Korea is so out of step with the World today.If you have already read all the WWII and Cold War stories of the LaCarre genre, this should book is your next step into the mid-20th Century intrigue. ke
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Escaping North Korea By Rob Hardy The behavior of North Korea among the community of nations has been problematic for decades. There have been recent aspects that have a comic-opera silliness about them, like the faked photos of a supposedly successful missile testing, or Kim Jong Un’s tantrum over a terrapin farm that wasn’t producing the lobsters he wanted, or the nation’s reaction to the movie _The Interview_. It isn’t silly, though, that North Korea has nuclear arms, or has the most repressive political system in the world with many documented crimes against humanity. The monstrous government came into being with Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and the history of how this happened is one part of the story within _The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom_ (Viking) by Blaine Harden. Harden wrote _Escape from Camp 14_, published in 2012, about a young man’s harrowing escape from a North Korean slave labor camp. A reader of that book called him to see if Harden had ever heard of the pilot who stole a MiG from North Korea in 1953. Harden had not, whereupon the caller laughed a little and suggested that Harden might be better informed. The caller was the pilot himself, the former No Kum Sok, and Harden did get better informed, and has brought out a fascinating book that is an excellent primer of North Korean history.Harden’s book switches short chapters between Kim Il Sung and No Kum Sok. Kim was 25 in 1937 when he lead a guerrilla attack against a little town controlled by the Japanese. It was a tiny and strategically insignificant success, but he gradually parlayed it into tyranny by toadying to Stalin. He eventually convinced Stalin to allow him to invade South Korea, which led to Americans bombing cities throughout the north. His propaganda efforts made him loved, or at least feared, by his people, but his efforts to make North Korea financially stable and strong were a failure. He died in 1994; his North Korea had never been able to survive without huge handouts. No Kum Sok early decided he wanted to go to America, but developed a long-term strategy of becoming the most fervent and visible supporter of the government and of communism, all the time looking for a way out. This got him to the North Korean naval academy, and to flight training, and to flying the best bomber the Russians had, the MiG-15.On 21 September 1953, not long after the ceasefire that ended the Korean War, he took off on a training mission but flew south. The Americans at Kimpo Air Force Base had no idea he was coming; he was lucky that the radar was turned off for maintenance. He nearly hit an American fighter plane on the runway, but safely climbed down from his plane once he had brought it to a stop. The American airmen were astonished, but had trouble finding out what was going on; No’s one English word was “motorcar,” which was insufficient explanation, no matter how often he repeated it.The Americans assumed No had been lured because of “Operation Moolah,” a simple bribe of $100,000 to anyone who could bring them a MiG. Leaflets had been dropped over North Korea to advertise the scheme, and radio broadcasts had announced it, but No had not heard of Operation Moolah; he was simply making his escape to freedom and to become an American. It was a great propaganda coup for the Americans. No helped out with explaining all about the plane, which was taken apart for analysis and eventually wound up at the Air Force Museum in Dayton. Because he had not really brought the plane for a reward, there was some reluctance to pay the money, but eventually he got it, as a start to his life as an American engineer, family man, and businessman, now retired and living in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was a happy ending for him, though not for the associates he left behind in North Korea, nor for millions of impoverished and starving North Koreans. Besides telling No’s exciting story (with the assistance of newly declassified documents), Harden has explained how from the beginning North Korea has harnessed American aggression, real and imagined, to keep its tyrannical family in power. The Cold War, in which No played a striking role, has yet to end.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. How the US role in the Korean War helped make North Korea what it is today By Mal Warwick The Korean War is little remembered in the US. After all, the hostilities ended more than sixty years ago, and that so-called “police action” (in Harry Truman’s words) has long been overshadowed by the even more destructive wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — despite the fact that 37,000 Americans lost their lives in the conflict. It seems unlikely, then, that more than a handful of us in the US are aware of the extraordinary story Blaine Harden tells in The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot. Far more than his previous book about North Korean history, Escape from Camp 14, which merely confirms what we already knew (or thought we knew) about the massive and brutal human rights violations that keep the Kim regime in power, The Great Leader illuminates the origins of the country in World War II and the overarching role of the Korean War in determining what North Korea has become today.The “Great Leader” of the title is, of course, Kim Il Sung, a client of Stalin’s Russia — he served in the Soviet army, never rising above captain — and the “Fighter Pilot” was a young man born No Kum Sok. No was, in fact, the youngest pilot in the North Korean air force when he defected in 1953 shortly after the armistice that concluded the Korean War, delivering a late-model MiG-15 jet fighter to a US airfield in South Korea. The event was headline news at the time.For an American, the most revealing — and disturbing — revelation that emerges from The Great Leader is the utter savagery with which the US bombed North Korea and the critical role that massive offensive has played in shaping North Koreans’ worldview to this day. Although glossed over in the official US Air Force history, American bombers virtually achieved what later commentators wistfully referred to in the context of the Vietnam War: “bombing the country back into the Stone Age.”Despite the intensive assaults on Hanoi, Haiphong, and vital North Vietnamese military targets, the death and destruction wreaked by the US in North Vietnam nearly two decades later apparently didn’t come close to the utter devastation suffered by North Korea. Bombing, chiefly by vintage World War II B-29 bombers, reduced the North Korean population by somewhere between fourteen and twenty percent (as many as 1.9 million people), according to different estimates. As Harden reports, “A Soviet postwar study of American bomb damage in the North found that 85 percent of all structures in the country were destroyed. The air force ran out of targets to blow up and burn.”Harden paints a detailed portrait of Kim Il Sung as a a cowardly and manipulative man who cleverly maneuvered Josef Stalin into supporting the ill-conceived invasion of South Korea that kicked off the war in 1950. Within a year, the North Korean army was in tatters, with “UN” forces (chiefly American) occupying most of the peninsula. Only the intervention of Mao Tse-Dung’s Chinese army — and, later, the delivery of thousands of Soviet MiG-15 fighters and pilots to neutralize the US Air Force — allowed North Korea to reclaim territory above the 38th Parallel. Thus, the war ended with the border precisely where it had been when the US and the USSR created North and South Korea in 1945.The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot joins a bookcase-full of books in English about North Korea — a total of 771 listed on Amazon (although many are novels or other works of questionable merit). In recent years, I’ve read what I believe to be some of the most revealing of these books: Harden’s Escape from Camp 14, Paul Fischer’s A Kim Jong-Il Production, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy, and an extraordinary, Pulitzer-winning novel by Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son. Together, these remarkable books offer an in-depth introduction to the history of North Korea.
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