
Dear Leader
by Jang Jin-sung
Kim Jong-il's poet defects with the secrets.
For you if
you want to see the North Korean regime from inside its own propaganda machine
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$20 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Jang was a state poet — one of a tiny elite who had access to foreign literature, foreign films, and Kim Jong-il himself. His job was to create the cultural mythology that kept the regime in place. This memoir is the rarest kind of North Korean dispatch: from someone who was part of the apparatus, who understood how it worked from the inside, and who eventually couldn't continue. The most politically illuminating North Korean account on this shelf — not the experience of the ordinary citizen but the machinery behind the curtain.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North Korea • East Asia
- Voice
- Written by a North Korean author
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Bowling for Columbine(2002)
dir. Michael Moore
Fear, guns, and the culture that connects them.
Michael Moore investigates the roots of American gun violence and the culture of fear surrounding it, from the Columbine shooting to the NRA's political power.
Why it’s here: Moore's methods aren't neutral, and it's worth knowing that going in — the Heston interview in particular has been widely criticized for selective editing. What survives the criticism is the underlying question about American fear and gun culture, asked louder here than almost anywhere since.

Citizenfour(2014)
dir. Laura Poitras
Filmed in the room where the leak actually happened.
Laura Poitras films Edward Snowden's first meetings with journalists in a Hong Kong hotel room as he hands over evidence of mass NSA surveillance.
Why it’s here: Poitras was already filming when Snowden reached out, so this isn't reconstructed after the fact — it's the actual hotel room, the actual first read of the documents, tension that isn't staged because nobody knew yet how it would end.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Apocalypse as political strategy.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Bertolt Brecht

Fascism, but make it vaudeville.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Internment
Samira Ahmed

Resistance from inside the camp
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
It Can't Happen Here
Sinclair Lewis

A populist wins in 1936. America becomes a dictatorship. Step by step.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
North Korea Journal
Michael Palin

What a visitor is allowed to see, honestly reported.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Without You There Is No Us
Suki Kim

Teaching English to Pyongyang's elite. Undercover.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Nothing to Envy
Barbara Demick

Six ordinary North Koreans, looked at very closely.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
