My three days spent in North Korea as Asia Correspondent of The Irish Times in March 2001 were surreal.
This is a police state wrapped in secrecy, and visitors from the West, especially journalists, are treated with suspicion and have their movements constantly monitored.
The regime churns out propaganda that would offend most western principles, and which utterly flatters the Kim Dynasty. Everywhere you go in the capital, Pyongyang, you find over-the-top tributes and eulogies to the "The Dear Leader", ruler Kim Jong Il, and his late father, "The Great Leader", Kim Il Sung.
The secrecy surrounding Kim Jong Il's regime and the severely restricted access makes writing a balanced book on the country Americans love to hate quite difficult. It has been very much in the news in recent times after it was included in President Bush's "axis of evil". CNN never fails to introduce a story on the "hermit state" without accompanying it with footage of North Korean soldiers goose-stepping through Pyongyang.
Rarely is there an opportunity to look in depth at the country's history, people, and current conditions. However, Bruce Cumings, professor of history at the University of Chicago and leading expert on Korea, seeks to do this in a sympathetic way in his book. Cumings challenges many of the preconceptions that have shrouded our understanding of the so-called "hermit state". Without denying or excusing the brutality of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il, Cumings argues that an understanding of North Korea must move beyond the denunciations put forth by the media and President Bush.
He attempts to shed light on North Korea's need for security and fear of invasion by looking at its history, and the legacy of brutal Japanese colonial rule which he says still shapes the country's psyche.
Cumings says most of the problems with Kim Jong ll and his regime today can be traced back to the actions and policies of the US during the second World War. The current nuclear showdown between the US and North Korea is merely the latest chapter in a long history of bitter antagonism and cat-and-mouse diplomacy.
He argues that the US policy of trying to defeat the North and reunify the peninsula, instead of going for containment, created the fortress state that exists today.
Assessing the effects and actions of the 50-year-old Korean War, Cumings discusses the extensive bombing of North Korean civilians by the US and the continuing presence of the American military on the border with the South.
He also presents a portrait of the North Korean people, based in part on his trips there. They are not only a brutalised people lavishly devoted to their leader, he contends, but a respectful, hard-working, well- educated people as well. The author disputes claims that North Korea is a dangerous, unstable government blackmailing the US with the threat of nuclear war. He says there have been miscalculations on both sides that have exacerbated the crisis.
While he is critical of the role that the US has played in the past and present, the respective Kim regimes do not escape his scrutiny either. He is critical of their record on human rights and on economic policy, which he blames for the North's current economic plight and famine.
The current regime is a very unpleasant and "abhorrent" one. It has at least 100,000 political prisoners and perhaps 150,000 in its local gulags. Its economy and living standards were as good as South Korea in the late 1970s, but its dogmatic economic policy and secretive nature helped worsen major floods and droughts to trigger a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
But the author writes that while the North Korean regime is not likeable, it is an "underdog" which has managed to preserve its unique cultural and political identity.
Cumings sees the North's military policy, including its nuclear programme, as a defensive strategy to ensure its survival in the face of a hostile US. A deal involving the end of North Korea's missile and uranium reprocessing technology in return for a formal peace treaty and mutual recognition was possible at the end of the Clinton presidency, says Cumings. He says it is still possible but would require President Bush to actually know something about North Korea.
His work is a welcome study of North Korea at this time of current "crisis". Last week's inspection of North Korea's nuclear facilities by a US delegation is a breakthrough. But it is only a small step forward. Continuing dialogue si essential if progress is to be made with Pyongyang in the coming year.
- North Korea: Another Country By Bruce Cumings, The New Press, 160pp. £ 14.95