Synopses & Reviews
From the bestselling author of
Escape from Camp 14, the murderous rise of North Korea's founding dictator and the fighter pilot who faked him out.
In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception and escape.
As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theft just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953 electrified the world and incited Kim's bloody vengeance.
During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans.
Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim's shadowy rise, as well as from neverbefore- released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the world's longest-lasting totalitarian state.
Review
"Blaine Harden takes us on a fascinating journey deep into the dark origins of the North Korean state, leavened by a stirring account of one young man's courageous quest to escape it. Thoroughly transporting." Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat
Review
"The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot is at once a fascinating look at how evil takes hold and how one ordinary man escapes its grasp with wit and determination. Harden's compelling narrative is not to be missed, an outstanding follow-up to Escape from Camp 14." Gregory A. Freeman, author of The Gathering Wind: Hurricane Sandy, the Sailing Ship Bounty, and a Courageous Rescue at Sea
Review
"A rewarding book with much to offer, including the likely spark of new interest in how singular choices made by both men and nations can reverberate for generations." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of Kim Il Sung's rise to power, and the brave North Korean fighter pilot who escaped the prison state and delivered the first MiG-15 into American hands
In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception and escape.
As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one milliondollars today). The theft just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953 electrified the world and incited Kim s bloody vengeance.
During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans.
Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim s shadowy rise, as well as from never-before-released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the world s longest-lasting totalitarian state."
About the Author
Blaine Harden is a contributor to The Economist, PBS Frontline, and Foreign Policy and has formerly served as The Washington Post's bureau chief in East Asia and Africa as well as a local and national correspondent for The New York Times and as a writer for the Times Magazine. He was also bureau chief in Warsaw, during the collapse of Communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia (1989-1993), and in Nairobi, where he covered sub-Saharan Africa (1985-1989). He is the author of three previous books: Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent (Norton, 1990), A River Lost: The Life and Death of the Columbia (Norton, 1996) and Escape From Camp 14 (Viking, 2012). Africa won a Pen American Center citation for first book of non-fiction. Escape From Camp 14 enjoyed a number of weeks on various New York Times bestseller lists, and was an international bestseller published in 27 languages. He lives in Seattle with his family. His newest book The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot will come out from Viking in April 2015.