The Impossible State

Much discussed and often maligned, precious little is known or understood about North Korea, the world’s most controversial and isolated country. Victor Cha pulls back the curtain, providing an unprecedented insight into North Korea’s history, the rise of the Kim family dynasty, and the obsessive personality cult that surrounds them.

The Impossible State illuminates the repressive regime’s complex economy and culture, its appalling record of human-rights abuses, its belligerent relationship with its neighbours and the United States, and analyzes the regime’s major security issues; all in the light of the destabilizing effects of Kim Jong-il’s recent death.

This enigmatic nation-state has continued to survive despite regularly violating its own citizens' inalienable rights and has suffered severe famine, global economic sanctions, a collapsed economy, and near-total isolation from the rest of the world.

This is the story of a land facing a pivotal and disquieting transition of power from tyrannical father to inexperienced son. Cha delves into the ideology that leads an oppressed, starving populace to cling so fiercely to its failed leadership.

With rare personal anecdotes from the author's time in Pyongyang and his tenure as a White House adviser, this engagingly written, authoritative, and highly accessible account offers much-needed answers to the most pressing questions about North Korea and ultimately warns of a regime that might be closer to its end than many might think—a political collapse for which the Western world may be woefully unprepared.