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The Real North Korea
- Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
- Narrated by: Steven Roy Grimsley
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. After providing an accessible history of the nation, he turns his focus to what North Korea is, what its leadership thinks, and how its people cope with living in such an oppressive and poor place. He argues that North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds. A living political fossil, it clings to existence in the face of limited resources and a zombie economy, manipulating great powers despite its weakness. Its leaders are not ideological zealots or madmen, but perhaps the best practitioners of Machiavellian politics that can be found in the modern world. Even though they preside over a failed state, they have successfully used diplomacy - including nuclear threats - to extract support from other nations. But while the people in charge have been ruthless and successful in holding on to power, Lankov goes on to argue that this cannot continue forever, since the old system is slowly falling apart. In the long run, with or without reform, the regime is unsustainable. Lankov contends that reforms, if attempted, will trigger a dramatic implosion of the regime. They will not prolong its existence.
Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive.
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Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post-Soviet Russia.
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insightful
- By Anonymous User on 01-28-20
By: Stephen Kotkin
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Upheaval
- Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In his earlier best sellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final audiobook in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change - a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma.
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The Urine of the Earth in a Teacup
- By Marian on 05-12-19
By: Jared Diamond
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The Square and the Tower
- Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Elliot Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and field marshals. It's about states, armies, and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?
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Not his best by a long chalk: Read Steven Pinker.
- By David on 02-05-18
By: Niall Ferguson
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The Cold War
- A World History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today.
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A lenghy treatise on the Cold War
- By Donald Hill on 11-21-17
By: Odd Arne Westad
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The White Man's Burden
- Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
- By: William Easterly
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man's Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch - a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West's economic policies for the world's poor.
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A Bit Repetitive
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-19
By: William Easterly
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Modern Times
- The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 37 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning with May 29, 1919, when photographs of the solar eclipse confirmed the truth of Einstein's theory of relativity, Johnson goes on to describe Freudianism, the establishment of the first Marxist state, the chaos of "Old Europe", the Arcadian 20s, and the new forces in China and Japan. Also discussed are Karl Marx, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Castro, Kennedy, Nixon, the '29 crash, the Great Depression, Roosevelt's New Deal, and the massive conflict of World War II.
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The Anti-Howard Zinn
- By Pork C. Fish on 05-22-12
By: Paul Johnson
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China in the 21st Century, 3rd Edition
- What Everyone Needs to Know
- By: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fully revised and updated third edition, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce listeners to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization.
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Amazing!
- By Anonymous User on 07-11-20
By: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, and others
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Blood Oil
- Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules That Run the World
- By: Leif Wenar
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Natural resources empower the world's most coercive men. Autocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend oil money on weapons and repression. ISIS and Congo's militias spend resource money on atrocities and ammunition. For decades resource-fueled authoritarians and extremists have forced endless crises on the West - and the ultimate source of their resource money is us, paying at the gas station and the mall.
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Caveat: Human beings -- Totally untrustworthy
- By lost the power cord could you send me another cord address 13 east wilmont ave somers point nj 08244 on 05-17-16
By: Leif Wenar
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Why?
- Explaining the Holocaust
- By: Peter Hayes
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century still seems elusive even 70 years later. Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions - yet none of them are fully convincing.
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Outstanding book! A must read
- By Pierre on 11-13-21
By: Peter Hayes
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North Korea Confidential
- Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors
- By: Daniel Tudor, James Pearson
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.
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Interesting portrait of North Korea marred by awful pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 08-03-21
By: Daniel Tudor, and others
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The Third Reich in History and Memory
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In the 70 years since the demise of the Third Reich, there has been a significant transformation in the ways in which the modern world understands Nazism. In this brilliant and eye-opening collection, Richard J. Evans offers a critical commentary on that transformation, exploring how major changes in perspective have informed research and writing on the Third Reich in recent years. Drawing on his most notable writings, Evans reveals the shifting perspectives on Nazism's rise to political power, its economic intricacies, and its subterranean extension into postwar Germany.
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Sweeping historiography
- By Kevin Bishop on 03-03-24
By: Richard J. Evans
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Decline and Fall
- The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America
- By: John Michael Greer
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
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The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.
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Will insist friends & family read this book
- By Paul on 05-14-16
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Awful! And I don't mean the book . . .
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The first woman ever to issue the threat of a nuclear weapons strike is not even officially a head of state. Kim Yo Jong is the sister of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and, as their murderous regime’s chief propagandist, internal administrator, and foreign policymaker, she is the most powerful woman in North Korean history. Cruel but charming, she threatens and insults foreign leaders with sardonic wit, issuing proclamations and denunciations in her own name, a first for any woman in the Korean royal family.
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Too many details distracting from the story
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From terrifying missile tests, its unmissable Olympic cheering squad, and the war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un - not to mention stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations - news from North Korea has dominated global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city.
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Save me from the hippie millennials with a PhD
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Inspiring and Hard Hitting
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Ask a North Korean
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The weekly column Ask a North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these fascinating interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic firsthand testimonies about what is happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." This book sheds critical light on all aspects of North Korean politics and society and shows that even in the world's most authoritarian regime, life goes on in ways that are very different from what you may think.
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Brilliant Narration on the unknown perspective
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A groundbreaking account of the rise of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—from his nuclear ambitions to his summits with President Donald J. Trump—by a leading American expert. From the beginning of Kim's reign, former CIA analyst Jung Pak has been at the forefront of shaping US policy on North Korea and providing strategic assessments for leadership at the highest levels in the government. Now, in this masterly book, she traces and explains Kim's ascent on the world stage.
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Derivative
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North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
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In Mortal Combat
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In this brilliant narrative of America's first limited war, Toland lets both the events and the participants speak for themselves, employing scrupulous archival research and interviews as the bases for the drama and accuracy of his writing. In Mortal Combat reveals Mao's prediction of the date and place of MacArthur's Inchon landing, Russia's indifference to the war, Mao's secret leadership of the North Korean military, and the true nature of both sides' treatment and repatriation of POWs.
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Slightly disappointed
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In Order to Live
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
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The Girl with Seven Names
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
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Korea
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Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just 50 years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle.
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Amazing book
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What listeners say about The Real North Korea
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Neuron
- 07-29-15
Broad and nuanced account of North Korea
Of all the countries in the world, North Korea must be among the worst places to be born. In terms of GDP, North Korea is as poor as Ghana. But the worst part of being born in North Korea is without doubt the brutal leadership. Kim jong un and Kim jong il before him, are prepared to do anything to save themselves from the pressures they are facing, from within their own nation as well as from the outside. They are not, as one might think, naive. Rather they know exactly what they need to do in order to stay in power. Unfortunately for the common people in North Korea, this entails a ruthless big brother society where the smallest signs of disobedience or doubt in the North Korean leadership, are severely punished.
The author, Andrei Lankov, has the right profile to tell the story of North Korea. He is a Russian citizen who has visited North Korea many times over the past 3-4 decades. He does not seem to biased in favor of any particular view, and he demolishes a number of myths and exaggerations that are popular in the west. For example, I have always thought that there was no private market in North Korea, but this is false. While North Korea, officially do not have a private market, in practice they do have a growing private market, and the people running them tends to be rich compared to other North Korean citizens. As long as these people behave according to a set of informal rules, the government, realizing their utility, leaves them and their businesses alone.
Even though Lankov exposes western exaggerations, he also describes the atrocities of the North Korean leadership and the resulting suffering that the North Korean people must consequently endure. All in all, the book provides a nuanced and multifaceted account of North Korea, from a historical and a contemporary perspective. If you want to understand this mysterious country better, this book is for you.
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14 people found this helpful
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- RP
- 03-17-15
A thorough look at the puzzle that is North Korea
What made the experience of listening to The Real North Korea the most enjoyable?
What I enjoyed most was the unique perspective of its author, Andrei Lankov, who grew up in the former Soviet Union, a sometime ally of North Korea, and lived in North Korea as an exchange student. This is a clear analysis of the politics and their consequences in North Korea, backed up by personal experience and research from numerous sources to add depth and interest to this book. There is no hype or anti-east / anti-west rhetoric, just analysis of a very puzzling country.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
The author's experience is unique in that he understands the things that puzzle outsiders who lack such experience. For example, he explains why the North Korean leaders are not irrational: they merely appear that way to outsiders as they act in order to maintain power within North Korea. Despite the general repulsiveness of the Kim regime to outsiders, and their surface irrationality, the Kims are just crazy like foxes.
What does Steven Roy Grimsley bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
His intonation helps a great deal in helping the book flow, and making it easier to follow the author's tone and thread of thought in the writing. As a Korean speaker, a few incorrect pronunciations of Korea words (due to how they are romanized in print) were harder for me to follow, but were not a problem.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
It took a number of commutes home to get through this, but it was always fascinating.
Any additional comments?
I liked that the author concluded with some suggestions of how individuals can help in moving North Korea into the modern era.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Tim
- 05-30-16
Bugjjog Hangug
Andrei Lankov has an excellent prospective on "The Real North Korea" (Bugjjog Hangug). Instead of focusing on the day to day lives in North Korea, he goes in depth in the mystery on the communist country. Frontline has done a documentary base on Lankov's studies. If you are looking for books on socialism on this backward thinking country, there are many other titles out there, such as, "Nothing to Envy", or those two reporters from the United States that got captured. Those books are very dramatic on labor camps, torture, famine and whatever else the medias focus on.
"The Real North Korea" was written to understand the structure of the broken country that won't survive to the next century.
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- Daniel Walker
- 06-17-15
Unique insight into the complex situation in Korea
Would you consider the audio edition of The Real North Korea to be better than the print version?
I think so - the complex nature of the relationships and history made is easier to understand in this format.
What about Steven Roy Grimsley’s performance did you like?
His voice leant an appropriate gravitas to the subject matter.
Any additional comments?
This was a fascinating and unique insight into modern day North Korea; it's relationships with the outside world and daily life in the region have become clearer to me now, and the quick-to-judge, headline grabbing media treatment of the country can now be read with appropriate skepticism. The discussion of the future of North Korea, and how we in the international community might handle the inevitable collapse was also very interesting and informative.
I will probably give this one a second listen.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-05-15
Outstanding
Thoughtful analysis of the past, present, and future situation in North Korea. Best assessment I've read. Strongly recommend this for both the interested layman and the scholar.
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- Mike
- 06-01-15
great listen. good information
I found the book's history of Korea informative. The future possibilities and geopolitical analysis was very good and interesting
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- Ce
- 03-21-15
Exceptional Primer on the DPRK
The author's unique perspective as a former Soviet citizen lends credence to his expertise. A great overview of the Hermit Kingdom.
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- Scott
- 09-26-16
eye opening
loved this book. if you have any interest in politics and understanding N Korea and why they do what they do.. give this a listen
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- Johnathan Robinson
- 12-23-15
Insightful, objective view of North Korea
A very informed look into North Korea that presents all the discussion points in a format that shows no political agenda.
Just a great history book
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- King Pseudonymous IV
- 06-30-15
Interesting on why the regime behaves as it does
An interesting discussion of the logic of the Kim family's political survival and behavior, and of what this means for the future of Korea. Overall it was informative, but the author eventually struck me to be repeating or contradict himself. I like how he deconstructs naive ways of looking at North Korea, but he ends up in a patronizing sort of pessimism that's maybe a bit over the top. I'm glad I read it, though.
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