Official biographies: Choe In Su, Kim Jong Il: The People’s Leader, vol. 1 (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1983), 46, 75.
In her haunting memoir: Park, In Order to Live, 47.
“Even when he was a child”: Ibid.
In the early 1980s: Jae-Cheon Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership of North Korea (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 11–12; see also Kwang Joo Sohn, “Kim Jong Il’s Birth and Growth,” Daily NK, February 11, 2005.
She was a teenager when she joined: Suh, Kim Il Sung, 51.
“She snatched me”: Kim, With the Century, chap. 23.
In a 1999 interview: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 204.
Less flattering accounts: Ibid., 187.
Kim Jong Il’s early childhood: John Cha and K. J. Sohn, Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il: Notes from His Former Mentor (Bloomington, Ind.: Abbott Press, 2012), 17.
A year or so later: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 208.
Jong Il reportedly complained: Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership, 23–28.
He initially refused: Ibid., 23.
The situation was frustrating: Ra Jong-yil, Inside North Korea’s Theocracy: The Rise and Sudden Fall of Jang Song-Thaek, trans. Jinna Park (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019), 2.
The most prominent member: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 196
“Any place deemed”: Ibid.
Secured by small armies: Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, 136–37.
Hwang recalled that: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 216–17.
As an adolescent: Fischer, A Kim Jong-Il Production, 42–43.
His schoolmates said: Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership, 27.
In fact, a senior South Korean: Lim Dong-won, Peacemaker: Twenty Years of Inter-Korean Relations and the North Korean Nuclear Issue (Stanford, Calif.: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2012), 64.
“One can imagine”: Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea, 133–34.
Despite Jong Il’s complaints: Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership, 23–28.
For those surrounding: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 195.
Hwang recalled: Ra, Inside North Korea’s Theocracy, 2.
declassified 1978 CIA document: Central Intelligence Agency, The North Korean Succession: An Intelligence Assessment, October 1978, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp81b00401r002100110012-7.
“By guiding the movement”: Ibid.
And as the “keeper of the faith”: Ibid.
“In order to show his father”: Peter Maass, “The Last Emperor,” NYT Magazine, October 19, 2003.
Still, in a 1982 paper: Central Intelligence Agency, North Korea: The Dynasty Takes Shape, March 3, 1982, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp08s02113r000100210001-5.
For his father’s seventieth birthday: Andrei Lankov, North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007), 82–83.
That same year: Ibid.
Soon after graduating: Cha and Sohn, Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il, 28–30.
The regime released a statement: Mark Savage, “Kim Jong-il: The Cinephile Despot,” BBC News, December 19, 2011.
Six months later: “Choi Eun-Hee: South Korean Actress Who Was Kidnapped by North Dies,” BBC News, April 17, 2018.
The couple secretly taped: Barbara Demick, “Secret Tape Recordings of Kim Jong Il Provide Rare Insight into the Psyche of His North Korean Regime,” LAT, October 27, 2016.
“like any ordinary young man”: Fischer, A Kim Jong-Il Production, 273.
In the 1970s: Central Intelligence Agency, North Korean Military Capabilities and Intentions: A Special National Intelligence Estimate, May 23, 1979, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001171647.pdf.
Additional investment: Ibid.
CIA intelligence analysts: Ibid.
“is a form of warfare”: Quoted in Max Boot, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (New York: Liveright, 2013), xxiii.
the “weak [to] compensate”: Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 187–88.
A December 1991: National Intelligence Council memorandum, North Korea: Likely Response to Economic Sanctions, December 10, 1991, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005380437.pdf.
As Jonathan Pollack: Jonathan Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (New York: Routledge, 2011), 53–56.
In February 1993, the director: Joel Wit, Daniel Poneman, and Robert Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 38; National Intelligence Council, Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States through 2015, September 1999, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Foreign%20Missile%20Developments_1999.pdf.
The defector Hwang Jang Yop: Kevin Sullivan, “N. Korea Has A-Weapons, Defector Quoted as Saying,” WP, April 23, 1997.
Compounding the concern: National Intelligence Council, Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat.
In 1998, after denying U.S. charges: Kevin Sullivan, “N. Korea Admits Selling Missiles,” WP, June 17, 1998.
FOUR: THE SON RISING
Many defectors described: Jang Jin-sung, Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea, trans. Shirley Lee (New York: Atria Books, 2014), 111–12.
Song’s sister, who used to: Lim, Kim Jong Il’s Leadership, 100.
“meticulous and humorous comedian”: Ra, Inside North Korea’s Theocracy, 16.
“From what I heard”: Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, 686.