Becoming Kim Jong Un

One

From Ten-Foot-Tall Baby to International Statesman

North Korea is what CIA analysts call the hardest of the hard targets. The nuclear-armed country is an enduring national security threat, but the regime s opaqueness, self-imposed isolation, robust counterintelligence practices, and culture of fear and paranoia provide at best fragmentary information, impeding the agency s ability to inform, predict, and warn with a high level of confidence. Some of the most mundane pieces of information, such as birthdays of key regime leaders or the Kim family s whereabouts on any given day, are hard to verify or even obtain. Although North Korea has allowed foreign journalists into the country, their movements and reporting are tightly controlled and vetted. Kernels of what might have been truth are often buried under layers of regime mythmaking, rendering it indecipherable.

Hard target or not, this is our job at the CIA. Our mission is to warn policymakers about threats to our national security, highlight potential opportunities to advance U.S. interests, and sometimes make the call give the president and other U.S. officials an answer stripped of nuance and caveat to assist them in making urgent decisions. We analyze a vast array of information, from classified to open source, incorporating our knowledge of the adversary s history, culture, language, and past negotiations with the United States. In the career section of its website, the CIA specifies how intelligence analysts must quickly sift through data that is often inconsistent and incomplete. This is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle received at different times, from different places, and with pieces of other puzzles mixed in. Recruits must connect the dots because the country and the president rely on them to analyze the information and make objective assessments, many of which will have profound consequences for the direction of policy.

When it comes to North Korea analysis, it

Jung H. Pak has held senior positions at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She is a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution s Center for East Asia Policy Studies, where she focuses on the national security challenges facing the United States and East Asia. She has written for The Atlantic, USA Today, and The Hill, and is frequently interviewed as a North Korea expert on television, in documentaries, and on podcasts. Pak received her PhD in U.S. history from Columbia University and studied in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar. She lives in Washington, D.C.

An excellent biography [that] cuts through the regime s opacity and the fog of gossip to provide an excellent primer on the country s present-day leadership as well as hints of whatever might come next. . . . Becoming Kim Jong Un moves between storytelling in intimate, elegantly written scenes and clear, well-argued policy analysis. Los Angeles Times
 
Pak perceptively recognizes Kim s limitations. . . . As Pak tells us, Kim is bold. Washington must be as well. The New York Times Book Review

North Korea has long been regarded as a hard target by the Intelligence Community and with abundant good reason. Dr. Jung H. Pak has managed to shed more light on the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, than virtually anyone. She has adeptly and discreetly applied her experience as an intelligence analyst and managed to penetrate the opaque nature of North Korea, and in doing so has displayed her considerable skills in and mastery of the analyst s tradecraft. . . . An important book, both for the professional expert and for those who simply want to gain insight into the hermit kingdom and its enigmatic leader. James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence
 
Jung H. Pak s sober but absorbing portrait of North Korea s leader should be the starting point for any scholar, journalist, or policymaker trying to make sense of the most dangerous regime on earth. Pak ties together biography, national security analysis, and policy prescription with the precision one would expect from a scholar and former intelligence officer. Michael J. Green, former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University, and senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Becoming Kim Jong Un is the most complete account to date of a dictator who has too often been caricatured by the public. Highly readable, thoughtful, and