Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
Of the two books, Buruma finds Becker's assessment more intelligent.
As Buruma notes, Becker is also the author of Hungry Ghosts (Henry Holt, 1998), about Mao's man-made famine in China.
Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine
hat tip: Don Boudreaux at the Cafe Hayek blog.
UPDATE: Author Bradley K. Martin feels he was misrepresented in the New Yorker review. He left the following in the comments section, but I didn't feel it would be fair to leave it to chance that people would check out the comments section on something this substantial. So:
Whether because of his ideological preference for Becker's approach or for some other reason that I don't know about, Buruma falsified the thrust of my book by misquoting me. I have sent the following letter to The New Yorker demanding a correction, and am awaiting satisfaction:
Ian Buruma repeatedly plays fast and loose with quotations in assembling his malevolently creative summary of “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” (“Kimworld,” August 22). Several such instances seem to involve a disgraceful effort to gin up evidence backing his theme of gullibility among foreign observers with whose views he differs. To imply that I saw the rulers’ charisma as somehow offsetting evil deeds, he lifts a phrase, “there might be two sides to the story,” from my argument against unnecessary demonization of Kim Jong Il. This he mendaciously juxtaposes with a remark about Kim Il Sung’s personal magnetism, which appeared nearly 500 pages earlier in the context of the elder Kim’s pursuit of women. So that he can cluck that it is “naïve” not to realize that a “warm handshake will not explain why an entire people submitted,” he deceptively paraphrases the middle of a sentence in which I wrote that Kim Il Sung’s engaging presence was one factor that inspired loyalty. Deleting “one,” so that this appears to be the only factor, he ignores my chapter-length exploration of other factors including the biggest, the indoctrination system. As for Buruma’s suggestion that I struggled too hard for “balance” (the quotation marks are his) in evaluating the Kims’ regime, I actually wrote, “There was precious little on the positive side of the ledger page to balance the horrors” of the gulag. Ultimately Buruma, objecting to my refusal to frame the history of North Korea as a simple morality tale, seeks to portray me as a pushover for smooth-talking despots. Nothing doing, Ian. Pointing out the danger of being taken in by a Great Schmoozer, I observed of the Japanese politician Shin Kanemaru that Kim Il Sung “charmed his pants off.”
Buruma also distorts my reference to Andrew Holloway’s description of Pyongyang residents’ kindness and modesty, leaving readers to imagine that Holloway’s was a recent observation. That enables the reviewer to offer a glib contradiction—although in fact, as I noted, Holloway lived in Pyongyang almost two decades ago. In the very next paragraph I wrote that the subsequent famine severely tested North Koreans’ altruism, and in a later chapter I wrote that by the late 1990s their “fierce struggle for survival” required them to replace collectivist morality with self-interest. At Louisiana State University I’ve been teaching students that writers who refuse to let the facts get in the way of a good story are the bane of the journalistic trade. Buruma could do with matriculation, but I imagine he’ll have to pay out-of-state tuition. In any case, I want a correction.
Bradley K. Martin
Nagano, Japan
1 comment:
Whether because of his ideological preference for Becker's approach or for some other reason that I don't know about, Buruma falsified the thrust of my book by misquoting me. I have sent the following letter to The New Yorker demanding a correction, and am awaiting satisfaction:
Ian Buruma repeatedly plays fast and loose with quotations in assembling his malevolently creative summary of “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” (“Kimworld,” August 22). Several such instances seem to involve a disgraceful effort to gin up evidence backing his theme of gullibility among foreign observers with whose views he differs. To imply that I saw the rulers’ charisma as somehow offsetting evil deeds, he lifts a phrase, “there might be two sides to the story,” from my argument against unnecessary demonization of Kim Jong Il. This he mendaciously juxtaposes with a remark about Kim Il Sung’s personal magnetism, which appeared nearly 500 pages earlier in the context of the elder Kim’s pursuit of women. So that he can cluck that it is “naïve” not to realize that a “warm handshake will not explain why an entire people submitted,” he deceptively paraphrases the middle of a sentence in which I wrote that Kim Il Sung’s engaging presence was one factor that inspired loyalty. Deleting “one,” so that this appears to be the only factor, he ignores my chapter-length exploration of other factors including the biggest, the indoctrination system. As for Buruma’s suggestion that I struggled too hard for “balance” (the quotation marks are his) in evaluating the Kims’ regime, I actually wrote, “There was precious little on the positive side of the ledger page to balance the horrors” of the gulag. Ultimately Buruma, objecting to my refusal to frame the history of North Korea as a simple morality tale, seeks to portray me as a pushover for smooth-talking despots. Nothing doing, Ian. Pointing out the danger of being taken in by a Great Schmoozer, I observed of the Japanese politician Shin Kanemaru that Kim Il Sung “charmed his pants off.”
Buruma also distorts my reference to Andrew Holloway’s description of Pyongyang residents’ kindness and modesty, leaving readers to imagine that Holloway’s was a recent observation. That enables the reviewer to offer a glib contradiction—although in fact, as I noted, Holloway lived in Pyongyang almost two decades ago. In the very next paragraph I wrote that the subsequent famine severely tested North Koreans’ altruism, and in a later chapter I wrote that by the late 1990s their “fierce struggle for survival” required them to replace collectivist morality with self-interest. At Louisiana State University I’ve been teaching students that writers who refuse to let the facts get in the way of a good story are the bane of the journalistic trade. Buruma could do with matriculation, but I imagine he’ll have to pay out-of-state tuition. In any case, I want a correction.
Bradley K. Martin
Nagano, Japan
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