The Real North Korea: Life Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

In the midst of a diplomatic and military faceoff, Andrei Lankov discusses contemporary North Korea both as an expert on its history and politics, and as a former resident. Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived in North Korea as an exchange student in the 1980s. He has studied it throughout his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In this lecture from The World Beyond the Headlines series, Lankov draws from his timely new book, The Real North Korea, to substitute cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. He turns his focus to what North Korea is, what its leadership thinks, and how its people cope with living in such an oppressive and poor place. He argues that North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds.