Jim Hoare opened the British Embassy in Pyongyang in 2001 and was the first British diplomat and charge d'affaires resident in Pyongyang. He and his wife Susan Pares, who accompanied him there and worked with the United Nations, have provided in this book a valuable introduction and guide to North Korea, a country about which very little is known in the West and one that is generally referred to by various cliches.
The first and most important part of the book, "Understanding the DPRK" (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), outlines the basic facts necessary to understand the nature of North Korea today. Its first chapter, "Politics with North Korean Characteristics," describes the attitudes and methods employed by the regime. The authors point out that in North Korea "what matters is not what you are now, but what your family once was. There is, in other words, no escaping one's past."
The indoctrination process, the personality cult and the emphasis on conformity are explained. The "labour camps" and the reports of human-rights violations are described, as is the bizarre and ghoulish way in which the dead Kim Il Sung has been retained as president and is "revered" in ways that make the cults of Stalin and Mao Zedong seem tame. The book brings out the way in which history has been "interpreted" to support the regime and how the Confucian emphasis on loyalty and the relationship between rulers and ruled are exploited.