≡ Descargar Gratis The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom Blaine Harden 9780670016570 Books

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom Blaine Harden 9780670016570 Books

Download As PDF : The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom Blaine Harden 9780670016570 Books

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom Blaine Harden 9780670016570 Books

North Korea is really a horrible and awful place for anyone that values say, human life and consciousness. I have read more than a few books, and this is certainly one of the better books about the Hermit Kingdom.

The tack of this book is two stories, one about Kim, the founder of North Korea and No, the "moolah man" that delivered a Mig-15 to the West during the Korean War. But really this book is not about so much those events but the related history in between.

I found the book so very compelling. Both stories are fascinating and worthwhile. I think the value is reaching an understanding of both the promise of America and why North Korea fears and uses America as an all-purpose bogeyman.

Well worth reading.


Tags : The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom [Blaine Harden] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>From the New York Times</i> bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14</i>, Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of Kim Il Sung's rise to power,Blaine Harden,The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom,Viking,0670016578,Defectors - Korea (North),Defectors;Korea (North);Biography.,Dictators - Korea (North),Dictators;Korea (North);Biography.,Escapes - Korea (North) - History - 20th century,Fighter pilots - Korea (North),Fighter pilots;Korea (North);Biography.,Kim, Il-song,Korea (North) - History - 1948-1994,Korea (North) - Politics and government - 1948-1994,Korean War, 1950-1953,No, Kum-Sok,Theft - Korea (North) - History - 20th century,1912-1994,1948-1994,Asia - Korea,Biography,Biography & Autobiography Presidents & Heads of State,Biography Autobiography,Biography: historical, political & military,GENERAL,General Adult,History,History Asia Korea,History Military Korean War,HistoryAsia - Korea,HistoryMilitary - Korean War,HistoryWorld,History: World,KOREA - HISTORY,Kim, Il-sng,,Kim, Il-song,Korea (North),Korea (North) - History - 1948-1994,Korea (North) - Politics and government - 1948-1994,Korean War, 1950-1953,MILITARY HISTORY - KOREA CONFLICT,Military - Korean War,No, Kum-Sok,Non-Fiction,North Korea,Presidents & Heads of State,South Korea,Theft - Korea (North) - History - 20th century,United States,Asia - Korea,Biography & Autobiography Presidents & Heads of State,History Asia Korea,History Military Korean War,HistoryAsia - Korea,HistoryMilitary - Korean War,Military - Korean War,Presidents & Heads of State,Biography Autobiography,1912-1994,1948-1994,Biography,Kim, Il-sng,,Korea (North),Korea - History,Military History - Korea Conflict,History,History: World,Biography: historical, political & military

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom Blaine Harden 9780670016570 Books Reviews

Terrific insight on the pilot and Kim il sung. One of the most revealing and insightful books on how Kim came into power. The Pilot also had an admiration for America that makes one feel as though we can be that beacon of light again someday. And Eisenhower's role in protecting the dignity of the USA was thought provoking. Just a wonderfully written book.
I loved rooting for the pilot. The fact that he was basically planning his escape in some way for years before he was able to make it happen was so interesting. And I loved the way the author showed the parallel story lines of the pilot and Kim. I've read several North Korea books recently, and this was a completely different angle than the others, definitely a good story.
The Korean War is little remembered in the US. After all, the hostilities ended more than sixty years ago, and that so-called “police action” (in Harry Truman’s words) has long been overshadowed by the even more destructive wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — despite the fact that 37,000 Americans lost their lives in the conflict. It seems unlikely, then, that more than a handful of us in the US are aware of the extraordinary story Blaine Harden tells in The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot. Far more than his previous book about North Korean history, Escape from Camp 14, which merely confirms what we already knew (or thought we knew) about the massive and brutal human rights violations that keep the Kim regime in power, The Great Leader illuminates the origins of the country in World War II and the overarching role of the Korean War in determining what North Korea has become today.

The “Great Leader” of the title is, of course, Kim Il Sung, a client of Stalin’s Russia — he served in the Soviet army, never rising above captain — and the “Fighter Pilot” was a young man born No Kum Sok. No was, in fact, the youngest pilot in the North Korean air force when he defected in 1953 shortly after the armistice that concluded the Korean War, delivering a late-model MiG-15 jet fighter to a US airfield in South Korea. The event was headline news at the time.

For an American, the most revealing — and disturbing — revelation that emerges from The Great Leader is the utter savagery with which the US bombed North Korea and the critical role that massive offensive has played in shaping North Koreans’ worldview to this day. Although glossed over in the official US Air Force history, American bombers virtually achieved what later commentators wistfully referred to in the context of the Vietnam War “bombing the country back into the Stone Age.”

Despite the intensive assaults on Hanoi, Haiphong, and vital North Vietnamese military targets, the death and destruction wreaked by the US in North Vietnam nearly two decades later apparently didn’t come close to the utter devastation suffered by North Korea. Bombing, chiefly by vintage World War II B-29 bombers, reduced the North Korean population by somewhere between fourteen and twenty percent (as many as 1.9 million people), according to different estimates. As Harden reports, “A Soviet postwar study of American bomb damage in the North found that 85 percent of all structures in the country were destroyed. The air force ran out of targets to blow up and burn.”

Harden paints a detailed portrait of Kim Il Sung as a a cowardly and manipulative man who cleverly maneuvered Josef Stalin into supporting the ill-conceived invasion of South Korea that kicked off the war in 1950. Within a year, the North Korean army was in tatters, with “UN” forces (chiefly American) occupying most of the peninsula. Only the intervention of Mao Tse-Dung’s Chinese army — and, later, the delivery of thousands of Soviet MiG-15 fighters and pilots to neutralize the US Air Force — allowed North Korea to reclaim territory above the 38th Parallel. Thus, the war ended with the border precisely where it had been when the US and the USSR created North and South Korea in 1945.

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot joins a bookcase-full of books in English about North Korea — a total of 771 listed on (although many are novels or other works of questionable merit). In recent years, I’ve read what I believe to be some of the most revealing of these books Harden’s Escape from Camp 14, Paul Fischer’s A Kim Jong-Il Production, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy, and an extraordinary, Pulitzer-winning novel by Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son. Together, these remarkable books offer an in-depth introduction to the history of North Korea.
A very interesting read about an episode in history about which I had no prior awareness. If you're a first-half of the 20th Century history buff, as I am, this makes a good addition to a library.
I learned quite a bit about North Korea's dictators. The dual story of the dictator and the pilot was very interesting. There was a lot about the Korean War that was also unknown to me. The story of the air war over North Korea and the bombing of North Korea's cities by the US explains some of the propaganda still being spewed by the current North Korean regime. Very good book. Very well written and informative.
Excellent history of how North Korea came to be what it is. Also very good background on the Korean war and how both Stalin and Mao handled their country's involvement...they both thought Kim was an idiot! The story of the fighter pilot was gripping and there was just a plethora of information about this time period and this country that I had never heard. I thought the book was well written and very straightforward.
I'm mildly obsessed with the DPRK. There actually aren't a ton of books out there about Kim Il-Sung. This gave an interesting account of his history and thus that of NK that was not dry nor was it overly opinionated. The idea to parallel that history with that of "Kenneth Rowe" was a great idea and this was truly a unique read (even as far as DPRK books go). I was actually surprised at how much I liked this book. A lot of books on NK read the same and tread the same few facts.
North Korea is really a horrible and awful place for anyone that values say, human life and consciousness. I have read more than a few books, and this is certainly one of the better books about the Hermit Kingdom.

The tack of this book is two stories, one about Kim, the founder of North Korea and No, the "moolah man" that delivered a Mig-15 to the West during the Korean War. But really this book is not about so much those events but the related history in between.

I found the book so very compelling. Both stories are fascinating and worthwhile. I think the value is reaching an understanding of both the promise of America and why North Korea fears and uses America as an all-purpose bogeyman.

Well worth reading.