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"Jang Jin-sung demonstrates unique insight into the lifestyle and power structures of North Korea's top elite. The tale, ending with his own dramatic escape, depicts Jang's gradual metamorphosis from total conformist, to serious doubter, to enemy of the state. Dear Leader is a compelling story told with the elegance and poetry of the Orient: a page-turner that will change the way the world sees this enigmatic country."--Susanne Koelbl "Der Spiegel "

"Gripping."--David Pilling "Financial Times "

"A remarkable story of struggle and survival."--Larry Getlen "The New York Post "

"A look inside the mysteries of North Korea by the former poet laureate for the late Kim Jong-il. Likely to fascinate anyone who's read Adam Johnson's Pulitzer-winning novel The Orphan Master's Son."--Jocelyn McClurg "USA Today "

"'Dear Leader is a singular and powerful story, rare not only in its portrait of the inner workings of Pyongyang's elite circles, but rare because a "true writer"--almost unheard of in North Korea--was there to see it and to tell it."--Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son

Chapter Page
Map vii
Prologue ix
Part 1 Dictator
1. Psychological Warfare 3
2. Going Home 25
3. My Hometown Transformed 41
4. The Crime of Peering over the Border 60
5. A Farewell Sin 73
6. In the Rifle Sight 84
Part 2 Fugitive
1. Yanbian Looks to the World, the World to Yanbian! 95
2. Framed for Murder 106
3. "Annals of the Kim Dynasty" 125
4. Criminal Operations 142
5. North Korean Women Sold as "Pigs" 161
6. At a Loss 178
7. Farewell, Young-min 190
Part 3 Freedom
1. From Yanji to Shenyang 205
2. A Fateful Meeting with Wang Cho-rin 224
3. Becoming a Piano Teacher 239
4. The Kim Jong-il Strategy 252
5. Meeting Cho-rin's "Intended" 266
6. A Murderous Regime 281
7. Long Live Freedom! 293
Epilogue 309
Afterword 315
Translator's Note 319
Glossary 323
Index 325

THE STORY THEY COULDN'T HACK: In this international bestseller, a high-ranking counterintelligence agent describes his life as a former poet laureate to Kim Jong-il and his breathtaking escape to freedom.

As North Korea’s State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.

Never before has a member of the elite described the inner workings of this totalitarian state and its propaganda machine. An astonishing expos? told through the heart-stopping story of Jang Jin-sung’s escape to South Korea, Dear Leader is an “impossibly dramatic story…one of the best depictions yet of North Korea’s nightmare” (Publishers Weekly).